The New York Times editorial board called on President Biden to step aside as the presumptive Democratic nominee in the 2024 presidential race Friday, one day after his abysmal performance in a debate against Donald Trump.

While insisting that Biden, 81, had been an “admirable president,” the liberal Grey Lady concluded the incumbent appeared on the debate stage as “the shadow of a great public servant” and would be engaging in a “reckless gamble” by continuing his candidacy.

“There is no reason for the party to risk the stability and security of the country by forcing voters to choose between Mr. Trump’s deficiencies and those of Mr. Biden,” the board wrote. “It’s too big a bet to simply hope Americans will overlook or discount Mr. Biden’s age and infirmity that they see with their own eyes.”

“Mr. Biden answered an urgent question on Thursday night. It was not the answer that he and his supporters were hoping for,” the Times concluded. “But if the risk of a second Trump term is as great as he says it is — and we agree with him that the danger is enormous — then his dedication to this country leaves him and his party only one choice.”

The editorial was published two hours after Biden arrived in New York City for the first of a two-day fundraising swing, which will include a high-dollar event in the Hamptons on Saturday.

It followed a day of chaos and confusion among Democrats after Biden repeatedly froze, misspoke and lost his train of thought during the first of two scheduled debates against his predecessor in Atlanta.

At one point, Biden gazed down at his lectern for nearly 10 whole seconds before popping up again to say that he “finally beat Medicare.”

The Times editorial board noted that Biden had “challenged Mr. Trump to this verbal duel. He set the rules, and he insisted on a date months earlier than any previous general election debate. He understood that he needed to address longstanding public concerns about his mental acuity and that he needed to do so as soon as possible.”The truth Mr. Biden needs to confront now is that he failed his own test.”

Even before the Times editorial board weighed in, two of the paper’s most prominent columnists had called on Biden to step aside. “The Democratic Party has some prominent figures who I think would be in a good position to defeat Trump in November,” Nicholas Kristoff wrote late Thursday following the debate. “This will be a wrenching choice.”

“But, Mr. President, one way you can serve your country in 2024 is by announcing your retirement and calling on delegates to replace you,” he said, “for that is the safest course for our nation.”

Thomas Friedman, who called Biden “my friend” said that watching the debate “made me weep” and acknowledged that “Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election.”

Two workers were allegedly shot and killed by an illegal migrant at a Texas Chick-fil-A on Wednesday — in the latest disturbing incident believed to have been committed by an asylum seeker.

Oved Bernardo Mendoza Argueta, a 37-year-old native of El Salvador, was arrested and charged with capital murder after he opened fire in the fast-food joint in Irving around 3:40 p.m., according to police.

Two people, one identified as Patricia Portillo, died at the scene from gunshot wounds. The other victim’s identity is being withheld pending family notification, a police spokesperson told The Post.

He fled the scene in a silver 1997 Honda sedan but was tracked down and taken into custody around 2:50 a.m. Thursday morning.

Irving police confirmed he had an “ICE hold.”

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson told The Post that the agency’s Enforcement and Removal Operations in Dallas “lodged an immigration detainer with the Irving Police Department on Mendoza.”

ICE issues such holds for noncitizens who have been apprehended by local or state police to indicate ICE intends to take them into custody, according to the agency.

It’s not immediately clear where and when Mendoza entered the US.

“Our hearts are broken by the tragedy that unfolded inside our restaurant Wednesday. We will miss our two Team Members dearly,” Chick-fil-A said in a statement. “Right now, our focus is on providing care for our Team and the victims’ families.

“I want to thank the Irving Police Department for their professionalism and compassion. We will continue working closely with them as they conduct their investigation.”

The double homicide comes just days after 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray was allegedly brutalized and murdered by two illegal migrants from Venezuela in Houston.

Franklin Jose Pena Ramos, 26, and Johan Jose Rangel Martinez, 21, allegedly lured Jocelyn under a bridge, stripped her naked to the waist and assaulted her for two hours, according to court documents.

The men, who had been in the US only a few months, tied her hands behind her back during the assault, then strangled her and dumped her body in a bayou, prosecutors said. Both have been charged with capital murder.

Earlier this month, a 13-year-old girl was raped in a New York City park in broad daylight by an illegal migrant from Ecuador.

Christian Geovanny Inga-Landi, 25, held a girl and boy, both 13, at knifepoint in a secluded section of Kissena Park had their hands tied with shoelaces, police said.

The fiend raped the girl — and filmed it — before running off with the kids’ phones, cops said.

A flood of tips from local community members and good Samaritans who dramatically subdued the suspect led to his arrest days later.

Four people were killed and 10 others seriously injured when a driver plowed into a Long Island nail salon Friday, police and law enforcement sources said.

The minivan smashed through the Hawaii Nail & Spa storefront at 794 Grand Boulevard in Deer Park just after 4:30 p.m. — trapping customers and employees inside, according to cops and a report.

The vehicle came to rest towards the back of the salon, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake, photos show.

The entire glass storefront had been shattered and the ceiling was ripped down in the crash.

“There were people trapped and we extricated them and transported everyone to area hospitals,” Deer Park Third Assistant Chief Dominic Albanese told Newsday. “They were trapped inside. Everybody was inside the salon.”

“It’s horrible. It’s horrible. It can be tough for the community and tougher for the volunteer fire department, but you know we’re going to get through it,” Albanese added.

The nail salon is located in a strip mall on Grand Boulevard near Commack Road that includes a liquor store and a tattoo parlor.

More than 150 firefighters and EMS workers responded to what the Deer Park Fire Department called a “mass casualty event.”

Four people were pronounced dead at the scene, fire officials said. They were all believed to be inside the salon.

Ten others were taken to area hospitals for serious injuries, including one who was airlifted to the hospital, according to fire officials.

The driver of the van is believed to be one of the survivors.

Records show that the van had never received a traffic violation.

The cause of the crash are still under investigation.

Obama

Former President Barack Obama on Friday rushed to President Joe Biden’s rescue following a lackluster debate performance, one that sent many Democrats into a spiral of panic, the former president asserting that “bad debate nights happen.”

“Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know,” Obama said in a statement shared to social media, urging Americans to look beyond Biden’s dismal debate performance.

“But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself,” Obama claimed.

“Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the American people straight — and someone who lies through his teeth for his own benefit,” Obama said, concluding that “Last night didn’t change that, and it’s why so much is at stake in November.”

He then shared a link to Biden’s campaign website:

Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself. Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the…

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 28, 2024

Obama’s plea for Americans to look beyond Biden’s debate performance follows hours upon hours of panic from Democrats after Biden’s debate performance, which featured the 81-year-old looking confused at times, suffering freezes, and attempting to resurrect Democrat talking points — from the “very fine people” hoax to the “suckers and losers” fabrication. When he was not doing that, he repeated the phrase “the idea” 27 times.

Obama’s statement also comes after the former president made waves for leading Biden off the stage at a star-studded fundraiser in June:

Biden freezes before Obama grabs his arm and leads him off stage. Yikes! 😳 pic.twitter.com/nCgAGitoQ6

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 16, 2024

Clinton

Former President Bill Clinton defended President Joe Biden after his performance at the presidential debate on Thursday night against former President Donald Trump.

In a post on X, Clinton highlighted how Biden had “given us 3 years of solid leadership,” and created a “record number of new jobs,” and was “making real progress solving the climate crisis,” among other things.

“I’ll leave the debate rating to the pundits, but here’s what I know: fact and history matter,” Clinton wrote. “Joe Biden has given us 3 years of solid leadership, steadying us after the pandemic, creating a record number of new jobs, making real progress solving the climate crisis, and launching a successful effort in reducing inflation, all while pulling us out of the quagmire Donald Trump left us in. That’s what’s really at stake in November.”

I’ll leave the debate rating to the pundits, but here’s what I know: facts and history matter. Joe Biden has given us 3 years of solid leadership, steadying us after the pandemic, creating a record number of new jobs, making real progress solving the climate crisis, and launching…

— Bill Clinton (@BillClinton) June 28, 2024

Immediately after the debate, the CNN panel went into panic mode over Biden’s debate performance:

“Anderson, this was a game-changing debate in the sense that right now as we speak, there is a deep, a wide, and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party,” CNN host John King said after the debate:

It started minutes into the debate and it continues right now. It involves party strategists; it involves elected officials; it involves fundraisers. And they’re having conversations about the president’s performance, which they think was dismal, which they think will hurt other people down the party in the ticket. And they’re having conversations about what they should do about it.

CNN political commentator Van Jones also admitted, “That was painful. I love Joe Biden. I worked for Joe Biden. He didn’t do well at all. He did not do well at all.”

Despite some floating the idea of replacing Biden and donors backing down, a Biden campaign spokesperson said Biden is not dropping out. He reportedly plans to participate in a second debate in September.

Meanwhile, Republicans are also casting doubt on the possibility of Democrats replacing Biden.

“The Democrats don’t have the option of replacing Joe Biden,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told Breitbart News Daily after the debate.

“There’s not a vehicle for them to do that. Their rules are very onerous for their convention and their structure, and Jason Miller did a good job of weighing that out last night. And what we know is that it is going to be their ticket is set,” the senator said. “So it is going to be a Biden-Harris ticket.”

Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Michael Whatley tends to agree, telling Breitbart News Daily, “Those delegates that have voted for him in all of the primaries — and we have completely finished the primary process across the country — are bound to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”

“All of the money that they have raised, the hundreds of millions of dollars that they’ve raised, was raised for the Biden-Harris campaign. So it is absolutely not a given that they’re going to be able to switch this out, and they certainly are not going to do it if Jill Biden doesn’t allow Joe Biden to step down,” Whatley added.

TIME magazine has debuted a devastatingly simple cover for its next issue, the day after President Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in his first debate with Donald Trump in the lead-up to November’s election.

President Biden appeared to flounder in the 90-minute televised debate, frequently mumbling, trailing off his sentences and getting mocked by former president Trump for his at-times unintelligible statements.

Many political commentators described the mood inside the Democratic Party after the debate using one word: “Panic.”
That’s the word TIME Magazine has opted for too, alongside a photo of Mr Biden seemingly wandering off the side of the cover:

Mr Biden is 81, three years older than Mr Trump, and will turn 82 on November 20, two weeks after the presidential election.

Concerns about Mr Biden’s cognitive decline were exacerbated by the debate, which saw the President appear to freeze during one early question about national debt.

“(We’re) making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person … er, eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the … uh … with the Covid. Excuse me, with, dealing with everything we had to do with … uh … look”.

After a brief pause, he then said “we finally beat Medicare” as his final comment before the moderators moved on.

Speculation Mr Biden might step aside and allow another Democratic candidate to step up so far appears incorrect. He intends to see the campaign through to election day, and will front up for a second debate against Mr Trump in September, according to CNN senior White House correspondent Kayla Tausche.

“I know I’m not a young man. I don’t walk as easily as I used to. I don’t talk as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to,” Mr Biden told the crowd at a North Carolina rally the day after the debate.

“Well, I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. I know, like millions of Americans, when you get knocked down, you get back up.”

Mr Trump, meanwhile, was gloating at his own campaign rally, telling his supporters in Virginia that Mr Biden was “grossly incompetent” and a “trainwreck”.

Many shared Trump’s sentiments.

“This was a disaster for Biden. Many Democrats are looking for a new candidate after this debate,” Doug Muzzio, a retired public affairs professor at Baruch College, told The Post.

“Biden was tentative, rambling and sometimes incoherent,” he said.

“Trump, on the other hand, was clear and relatively coherent. He looked like he knew what he was talking about. Even though he repeatedly lied, he lies in an articulate way.”

According to a CNN flash poll, taken straight after the debate, 67 per cent of registered voters said Mr Trump had won the debate. Prior to the debate, 55 per cent of the voters had expected Mr Trump to prevail.

Tractor Supply is getting rid of several initiatives that some social media users and customers have slammed as “woke” in recent weeks.

The farming supplies retailer, which is headquartered in Tennessee, on Thursday said it “will ensure our activities and giving tie directly to our business” moving forward.

Tractor Supply said it will cease sponsorship of “nonbusiness activities” such as Pride festivals and voting campaigns, with intentions to focus more on “rural America priorities.”

Agricultural education, veterans and animal welfare were among the causes it identified.

The company said it will drop diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals it had previously set for itself. DEI positions at Tractor Supply will also get axed, according to the company. It will also cease sending data to the Human Rights Campaign, an LBGTQ advocacy group.

Additionally, the farming supplies retailer plans to prioritize land and water conservation initiatives, scuttling aims of curbing carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 and reaching net-zero by the decade after that.

“We work hard to live up to our mission and values every day and represent the values of the communities and customers we serve,” Tractor Supply said in its statement. “We have heard from customers that we have disappointed them. We have taken this feedback to heart.”

Some pages on Tractor Supply’s website related to its carbon emissions reduction and DEI efforts also redirected Friday to a photo of a Tractor Supply store.

Tractor Supply has been receiving heat from political activist Robby Starbuck and others about “woke” initiatives in place at the company. He urged Tractor Supply customers earlier in the month to spend their money elsewhere “until Tractor Supply makes REAL changes.”

Shares of Tractor Supply have fallen about 3% in the past month. Since Friday’s opening bell, the stock price has gone up over 2%.

The company last reported quarterly financial results in late April.

At the time, Tractor Supply forecast it would bring in $14.7 billion to $15.1 billion in net sales for the fiscal year. Annual net income was expected to be in the $1.06 billion to $1.13 billion range.

Martin Mull, who was known for TV shows like “Arrested Development” and “Roseanne” as well as movies like 1985’s “Clue” and 1983’s “Mr. Mom,” has died.

He was 80 years old.

Mull’s daughter said the comic and actor died at home on Thursday after “a valiant fight against a long illness.”

Mull, who was also a guitarist and painter, came to national fame with a recurring role in the Norman Lear-created satirical soap opera “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” and the starring role in its spinoff, “Fernwood Tonight,” on which he played Barth Gimble, the host of a satirical talk show.

“He was known for excelling at every creative discipline imaginable and also for doing Red Roof Inn commercials,” his daughter, Maggie Mull, a TV writer, said in an Instagram post.

“He would find that joke funny. He was never not funny. My dad will be deeply missed by his wife and daughter, by his friends and coworkers, by fellow artists and comedians and musicians, and—the sign of a truly exceptional person—by many, many dogs.”

“Simpsons” actor Harry Shearer wrote on his social media: “Took me a moment to grasp that Martin Mull has passed. During the late 70s, we worked together on Fernwood Tonight & its successor series. We wrote together, often at the beach (!), and sometimes I’d come out and riff with him. Mucho laffs! Always a treat to be with. RIP MM.”

Before his TV and movie success, Mull performed his music and comedy in Hollywood clubs in the 1970s.

He told The Associated Press in 1980: “In 1976 I was a guitar player and sit-down comic appearing at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip when Norman Lear walked in and heard me. He cast me as the wife beater on ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.’ Four months later, I was spun off on my own show.”

The Justice Department has criminally charged 193 people, including 76 doctors, nurses and other medical professionals, with participating in health care fraud schemes worth $2.75 billion, the agency said Thursday.

The two-week operation ensnared defendants accused of illegally distributing millions of pills of the stimulant Adderall.

It also included $176 million in fraudulent schemes involving drug and alcohol abuse treatment, including one defendant accused of billing the federal Medicaid program for treatment that was either inadequate or nonexistent, Attorney General Merrick Garland said.

The bust also targeted schemes involving telemedicine, charging 36 defendants accused of collectively submitting over $1.1 billion in false claims to the Medicare program.

“The Justice Department will bring to justice criminals who defraud Americans, steal from taxpayer-funded programs, and put people in danger for the sake of profits,” Garland said during a press conference.

The government seized more than $231 million in cash, luxury vehicles, gold and other assets in the law enforcement action that spanned 32 federal districts.

In one scheme, federal prosecutors charged seven people associated with the San Francisco-based telehealth startup Done Global with illegally distributing Adderall, a stimulant used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, commonly known as ADHD.

One nurse practitioner at the company was accused of prescribing 1.5 million pills of Adderall while having little interaction with patients. The company’s founder and top doctor were charged earlier this month.

US officials said fraud schemes may have played a role in well-publicized shortages of Adderall in recent years.

The investigations were led by the Justice Department’s criminal fraud unit and involved the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration.

Officials said they have increasingly relied on data analytics to spot fraud schemes that either put patients at risk or cost the US government.

The Supreme Court on Friday threw out the charges against a former Pennsylvania police officer who entered the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks. By a vote of 6-3, the justices ruled that the law that Joseph Fischer was charged with violating, which bars obstruction of an official proceeding, applies only to evidence tampering, such as destruction of records or documents, in official proceedings.

Friday’s ruling could affect charges against more than 300 other Jan. 6 defendants. The same law is also at the center of two of the four charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith against former President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C.

The Supreme Court heard oral argument on April 25 on Trump’s claims of immunity and has not yet issued its decision in that case. But Smith has argued that even if the court were to rule for Fischer, the charges against Trump could still go forward because they rested, in part, on efforts to use false electoral certificates at the joint session of Congress.

The law at the center of Fischer’s case is 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), which makes it a crime to “otherwise obstruct[], influence[], or impede[] any official proceeding.” U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols concluded that because the previous subsection, Section 1512(c)(1), bars tampering with evidence “with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding,” Section 1512(c)(2) only applies to cases involving evidence tampering that obstructs an official proceeding, and he dismissed the obstruction charge against Fischer.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed Nichols’ ruling, concluding that the “meaning of the statute is unambiguous,” so that it “applies to all forms of corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding, other than the conduct that is already covered by” the prior subsection.

On Friday, the Supreme Court vacated the D.C. Circuit’s decision, interpreting the law more narrowly to apply only to evidence tampering.

Roberts explained that the general principles used to construe statutes instruct courts that “a general phrase can be given a more focused meaning by the terms linked to it.” Here, he continued, subsection (c)(1) provides several specific examples of evidence tampering that the law prohibits – such as altering a record and concealing a document. When subsection (c)(2) immediately follows those examples, he reasoned, “the most sensible inference” is that the scope of (c)(2) is limited by the examples in (c)(1). Indeed, he noted, if subsection (c)(2) sweeps as broadly as the government posits, “there would have been scant reason for Congress to provide any specific examples at all” in subsection (c)(1).

Roberts also pointed to the provision’s history as additional support for the majority’s interpretation. Until the Enron scandal, the statute only made it a crime to use intimidation or physical force, or “corruptly persuade,” someone else to shred documents. The statute did not, Roberts noted, create liability for the person who actually shredded the documents – leading Congress to enact Section 1512(c) to “plug this loophole.”

“It would be peculiar to conclude that in closing the Enron gap, Congress actually hid away in the second part of the third subsection of Section 1512 a catchall provision that reaches far beyond the document shredding and similar scenarios that prompted the legislation in the first place.”

The government’s expansive construction of subsection (c)(2) would have other effects as well, he suggested. It “would criminalize a broad swath of prosaic conduct, exposing activists and lobbyists alike to decades in prison.”

When the case returns to the D.C. Circuit, Roberts instructed, that court can reconsider the obstruction charge against Fischer “in light of our interpretation of Section 1512(c)(2).”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the Roberts opinion but also filed a concurring opinion in which she emphasized that despite “the shocking circumstances involved in this case or the Government’s determination that they warrant prosecution, today, this Court’s task is to determine what conduct is proscribed by the criminal statute that has been invoked as the basis for the obstruction charge at issue here.”

Jackson suggested that it “beggars belief that Congress would have inserted a breathtakingly broad, first-of-its kind criminal obstruction statute (accompanied by a substantial 20-year maximum penalty) in the midst of a significantly more granular series of obstruction prohibitions without clarifying its intent to do so.”

Jackson also made clear that, at least in her view, the charges against Fischer could still go forward. He was charged, she stressed, with “corruptly obstructing a proceeding before Congress, specifically, Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote,” which used records and documents. If, Jackson posited, the conduct at the center of the charges against Fischer “involved the impairment (or the attempted impairment) of the availability or integrity of things used during the January 6 proceeding,” then the charges against him can go forward.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett dissented, in an opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Although “events like January 6th” may not have been the target of subsection (c)(2), she acknowledged (noting in a parenthetical, “Who could blame Congress for that failure of imagination?”), she argued that the court should “stick to the text” when statutes “go further than the problem that inspired them.” Instead, she contended, the court “does textual backflips to find some way — any way — to narrow the reach of subsection (c)(2).”

For Barrett, the text of subsection (c)(2) clearly supports the government’s broader interpretation. Subsection (c)(2), she asserted, “covers all sorts of actions that affect or interfere with official proceedings,” and the word “otherwise” does not limit its scope.

Barrett also rejected the majority’s contention that the government’s interpretation could lead to lengthy criminal sentences against activists and lobbyists. First, she noted, a defendant can only be convicted under subsection (c)(2) if the government can show that he acted “corruptly.” Second, she added, although the law calls for a maximum sentence of 20 years, it does not specify a minimum sentence – suggesting that Congress believed that conduct covered by the law “may run the gamut from major to minor.”

In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland indicated that he was “disappointed” by the ruling, but he stressed that “the vast majority of the more than 1,400 defendants charged for their illegal actions on January 6 will not be affected by this decision. There are no cases,” Garland said, “in which the Department charged a January 6 defendant only with the offense at issue in Fischer.”

President Joe Biden attempted to calm the panic about the viability of his candidacy in the hours after his disastrous debate performance, telling supporters at a campaign rally on Friday that despite not being as young as he used to, “I know how to tell the truth.”

“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” he said, to a crowd of people cheering. “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. I know how to get things done. And I know like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down you get back up.”

“I would not be running again if I did not believe with all my heart and soul that I can do this job,” he continued.

But the rally may not be enough to quiet an already widespread panic in the Democratic Party over Biden’s debate performance against Trump. Biden’s raspy voice, trailing answers and deflated stage presence during the 90-minute debate brought into the open what was once a taboo topic: replacing him on the top of the ticket. His comments at the Friday rally were an early indication of how his campaign plans to do damage control.

In front of a crowd of a few hundred supporters on Friday afternoon, Biden was far more energized and fired up than on the debate stage.

As supporters generously cheered on the president, waving “Let’s Go Joe” campaign signs, Biden, reading prepared remarks, lobbed sharp attacks at Trump for his criminal convictions and his position on abortion.

He emphasized that the former president was not honest in the debate. And he shouted through much of the speech, at times breaking to cough.

“He set a new record for the most lies told in a debate,” Biden said. “He lied about how he had nothing to do with the insurrection on January 6.”

The lineup of speakers who took the podium before Biden didn’t address the president’s rocky debate performance. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper zeroed in on attacking Trump, while First Lady Jill Biden said his performance on the stage was “Joe Biden — a president with integrity and character who told the truth,” while Trump told “lie after lie.” A North Carolina father, Eric Fitts — whose family went viral a few months ago on Tiktok after eating Cookout with Biden in their Raleigh home — told the crowd that he watched Biden with “pride” Thursday night.

Polls have consistently shown that voters — including his own supporters — think Biden is too old to effectively serve a second term.

The Biden campaign had hoped that the debate would be an opportunity to prove to the public that the president was capable of serving another four years. But his performance had the opposite effect, all but ensuring that concerns about the 81-year-old’s fitness for office will only intensify.

Biden aides often scoff at suggestions that he is not up for the job, insisting that he is as sharp as ever behind closed doors. At the same time, they have been reluctant to put him in more public settings where he could demonstrate that sharpness. Biden has participated in far fewer traditional media interviews and press conferences compared to his predecessors.

But the intense panic within the party following his debate performance raised questions about what he would do to more aggressively address the age issue over the next few months of the campaign.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon must report to prison by Monday after the Supreme Court rejected his last-minute bid to stave off his four-month sentence for defying subpoenas from the House Jan. 6 committee.

Bannon was convicted in Washington on two counts of contempt of Congress nearly two full years ago, in July 2022, and sentenced to four months in prison in October 2022.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols had put his sentence on hold as he pursued an appeal of his conviction, which was rejected in May.

Nichols then ordered Bannon to report to prison by July 1, saying there was no basis to continue to delay the sentence.

An appeals court then rejected Bannon’s appeal of the decision, leaving only the Supreme Court to help him avoid incarceration.

Bannon was held in contempt of Congress after he blew off the Jan. 6 committee’s request for documents and testimony as part of its investigation into former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and remain in power in the lead-up to the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.

Bannon’s lawyer told the Supreme Court that he was relying upon the advice of counsel, saying he was waiting for issues of executive privilege to be settled.

But as federal prosecutors noted in their 2022 sentencing memo, there was no operational claim of executive privilege, as Bannon had been a part of the Trump administration years earlier, not during the time frame being examined by the Jan. 6 committee.

Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro, who was sentenced to four months in federal prison on the same charges, is finishing up his sentence after he reported to prison in March.

Bannon, who is 70, has already been assigned an inmate number by the federal Bureau of Prisons: 05635-509.

Rhonda Massie, the wife of Rep. Thomas Massie, R-KY, has died, the congressman announced Friday morning.

“Yesterday my high school sweetheart, the love of my life for over 35 years, the loving mother of our 4 children, the smartest kindest woman I ever knew, my beautiful and wise queen forever, Rhonda went to Heaven,” Massie wrote on social media.

“Thank you for your prayers for our family in this difficult time.”

No information regarding the nature of her passing was shared by Massie or his staff in the immediate aftermath.

Thomas Massie, a maverick known for his contrarian brand of Republicanism, has served as congressman to Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District since 2012. The district is largely comprised of the state’s Northern Kentucky region.

A Vanceburg native, the congressman met Rhonda Massie when they both attended Lewis County High School.

“She was valedictorian at our high school where we went to the Prom together, accepted at MIT and Harvard, earned a Mechanical Engineering degree from MIT, and devoted her life to our family,” Massie wrote.

Fellow politicians sent their condolences after Massie shared the news.

“Rhonda Massie was a delightful person. Please join me in praying for Congressman Massie and his family,” Secretary of State Michael Adams said in a post in response to the news Massie shared.

Four years ago this month, the wife of Rep. Andy Barr passed away from a rare heart condition called mitral valve prolapse. Eleanor Carol Leavell Barr was 39 years old.

Barr expressed his condolences to Massie in a social media post.

“I am deeply saddened by the passing of Rhonda Massie, the beloved wife of my friend and colleague, Thomas Massie. Rhonda’s warmth, kindness and dedication to her family and community touched everyone who had the privilege of knowing her,” Barr wrote.

Former Congressman Rep. Ron Paul, the father of Rand Paul, also sent prayers.

“It’s so hard to process this tragedy,” wrote Jim Pfaff, the president of The Conservative Caucus in Washington. “She was Thomas’s heart. They were best friends, fellow engineers and most of all loving spouses.

“My heart breaks for Thomas.”

The Supreme Court cleared the way for cities to enforce bans on homeless people sleeping outside in public places on Friday, overturning a California appeals court ruling that found such laws amount to cruel and unusual punishment when shelter space is lacking.

The case is the most significant to come before the high court in decades on the issue and comes as a rising number of people in the U.S. are without a permanent place to live.

In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the high court found that outdoor sleeping bans don’t violate the Eighth Amendment.

Western cities had argued that the ruling made it harder to manage outdoor encampments in public spaces, but homeless advocates said punishing people who need a place to sleep would criminalize homelessness.

In California, which is home to one-third of the country’s homeless population, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said the decision gives state and local officials authority to clear “unsafe encampments” from the streets under policies that respect fundamental human needs. “This decision removes the legal ambiguities that have tied the hands of local officials for years,” he said.

Justice Neil Gorsuch acknowledged those concerns in the opinion he wrote for the majority.

“Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it,” he wrote. “A handful of federal judges cannot begin to ‘match’ the collective wisdom the American people possess in deciding ‘how best to handle’ a pressing social question like homelessness.”

He suggested that people who have no choice but to sleep outdoors could raise that as a “necessity defense,” if they are ticketed or otherwise punished for violating a camping ban.

Homeless advocates, on the other hand, have said that allowing cities to punish people who need a place to sleep would ultimately make the crisis worse. Cities had been allowed to regulate encampments under a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling but couldn’t completely bar people from sleeping outdoors.

“Sleep is a biological necessity, not a crime,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, reading from the bench a dissent joined by her liberal colleagues. “Homelessness is a reality for so many Americans.”

Punishing people for something they can’t control, like homelessness, is cruel and unusual, she said. She warned that striking down Eighth Amendment arguments against camping bans likely won’t end the fights over the ordinances in court.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, criticized the majority ruling, saying cities shouldn’t “attempt to arrest their way out of this problem or hide the homelessness crisis in neighboring cities or in jail.” The only way to truly address it, she said, is to connect people with housing and services.

The case came from the rural Oregon town of Grants Pass, which appealed a ruling striking down local ordinances that fined people $295 for sleeping outside after tents began crowding public parks. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over the nine Western states, has held since 2018 that such bans violate the Eighth Amendment in areas where there aren’t enough shelter beds.

Grants Pass Mayor Sara Bristol told The Associated Press that the city will not immediately start enforcing those local ordinances fining people for sleeping outside and that the city council will need to review the decision and determine the next steps.

“This lawsuit was about whether cities have a right to enforce camping restrictions in public spaces, and I’m relieved that Grants Pass will be able to reclaim our city parks for recreation,” said Bristol, who serves in a nonpartisan position. “Homelessness is a complex issue, and our community has been trying to find solutions.”

Attorney Theane Evangelis, who represented Grants Pass before the high court, applauded the ruling, saying the 9th Circuit decision had “tied the hands of local governments.”

“Years from now, I hope that we will look back on today’s watershed ruling as the turning point in America’s homelessness crisis,” she said.

In Portland, though, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said the effect of the ruling would likely be muted since the state has separate legal limits on how cities can manage encampments. Seattle officials also expected a limited impact.

An attorney for homeless people who live in the town bemoaned the decision.

“We are disappointed that a majority of the court has decided that our Constitution allows a city to punish its homeless residents simply for sleeping outside with a blanket to survive the cold when there is nowhere else for them to go,” said Ed Johnson, director of litigation at the Oregon Law Center.

Friday’s ruling comes after homelessness in the United States grew a dramatic 12% last year to its highest reported level, as soaring rents and a decline in coronavirus pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more people.

More than 650,000 people are estimated to be homeless, the most since the country began using a yearly point-in-time survey in 2007. A lack of access to mental health and addiction resources can contribute to the crisis. Older adults, LGBTQ+ people and people of color are disproportionately affected by homelessness, advocates said.

Nearly half of people without housing sleep outside, federal data shows.

Derrick Belgarde, executive director of the Chief Seattle Club, a nonprofit that provides shelter, housing and other resources for Native Americans, said there’s a reason people may choose to sleep outside, explaining that before his organization was started members of the Native American population in the area weren’t using shelters because they didn’t feel safe in them or feel as though they belonged.

“I think it’s going to cause a lot of pain, a lot of misery to deny people the right to safety, to feel safe, to feel a sense of belonging. It’s going to be devastating for a lot of people,” said Belgarde, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians.

The 9th Circuit decision had governed nine states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

Peter Thiel, once one of Donald Trump’s major financial backers in the tech industry, said Thursday that even though he’s not providing money to the Republican presumptive nominee’s campaign this time around, he’d vote for him over President Joe Biden.

“If you hold a gun to my head, I’ll vote for Trump,” Thiel said in an interview on stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “I’m not going to give any money to his super PAC.”

Thiel donated $1.25 million to Trump’s campaign in 2016 at a time when the vast majority of tech money was going to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

Thiel, best known for an early bet on Facebook and for co-founding Palantir, also spoke at the Republican National Convention that year and, after the election, helped organize a meeting between Trump and top execs at Amazon, Apple, Google, Tesla and several other giant tech companies.

However, Thiel later soured on Trump and said last year that he wouldn’t be funding any politician in the 2024 presidential campaign. That’s after he spent $32 million on Republican candidates in the 2022 midterm elections with mixed results.

In Ohio, Trump’s pick, Republican J.D. Vance, defended a GOP-held seat against Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan. But in Arizona, Republican Blake Masters failed in his bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.

A New Hampshire man charged with threatening the lives of presidential candidates last year has been found dead while a jury was deciding his verdict, according to court filings Thursday.

The jury began weighing the case against Tyler Anderson, 30, of Dover on Tuesday after a trial that began Monday.

A court filing said “the government has learned that the defendant is deceased.” Prosecutors have moved to dismiss the indictment having learned Anderson has died.

Anderson was indicted by a federal grand jury in December on three counts of sending a threat using interstate commerce. Each charge provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, up to three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000.

The U.S. Attorney’s office did not name the candidates. When Anderson was arrested, a spokesperson for Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said that texts were directed at his campaign.

Anderson was arrested on Dec. 9 and was released Dec. 14. A federal judge set forth several conditions for his release, including that he avoid contact with any presidential candidate and their political campaigns.

Anderson, who was receiving mental health treatment, was also ordered to take all of his prescribed medications.

According to court documents, Anderson received a text message from the candidate’s campaign notifying him of a breakfast event in Portsmouth.

The campaign staff received two text messages in response. One threatened to shoot the candidate in the head, and the other threatened to kill everyone at the event and desecrate their corpses.

A court document filed when Anderson was arrested included a screenshot of texts from Dec. 6 threatening a mass shooting in response to an invitation to see a candidate “who isn’t afraid to tell it like it is.” Republican Chris Christie called his events “Tell it Like It Is Town Halls.”

A spokesperson for the Christie campaign had thanked law enforcement officials for addressing those threats.

The U.S. Department of Justice doesn’t name victims out of respect for their privacy and our obligations under the Crime Victims Rights Act, a DOJ spokesperson said.

Anderson had told the FBI in an interview that he had sent similar texts to “multiple other campaigns,” according to a court document.

The charges say similar texts were sent to two different candidates before the Ramaswamy messages, on Nov. 22 and Dec. 6.

A popular adult entertainer has been arrested and charged in New York with sending and receiving “hundreds of video of child pornography.”

James Smith, known by his porn star name Austin Wolf, is scheduled to appear in Manhattan federal court on Friday on one count of distribution and receipt of child pornography.

According to the Southern District of New York, Smith used Telegram to exchange hundreds of videos with another person, whose phone was seized by the FBI.

Prosecutors said an undercover FBI agent used that person’s Telegram account to chat with Smith.

Federal authorities ultimately conducted a search back in April of the 43-year-old porn star’s Manhattan apartment, where prosecutors said an SD card was recovered containing hundreds of video of child porn.

The videos recovered by feds allegedly contained children as young as infants, and in at least one case depicted a 10-year-old child bound and raped by a man.

“I want to make it clear: those who distribute child sexual abuse images prey upon the most vulnerable in our society. Each image is a crime scene, leaving lasting scars on innocent victim,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge James Smith said in a statement on Friday.

The charge against Smith carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum of 20 years.

Attorney information for the entertainer was not immediately known.

DEBATE TAKEAWAYS

BIDEN REPLACEMENT TALKS 

Democrats are so panicked over President Joe Biden’s faltering debate performance some are actively discussing what was once unspeakable: replacing him on the ticket.

Three strategists close to three potential Democratic presidential candidates said they had been bombarded with text messages throughout the debate. One adviser said they received pleas for their candidate to step forward as an alternative to Biden.

Another adviser said they had “taken no less than half a dozen key donors texting ‘disaster’ and [the] party needs to do something,” but acknowledged that “not much is possible unless” Biden steps aside.

They were among more than a dozen Democrats who spoke with POLITICO, most of whom were granted anonymity to speak freely.

One major Democratic donor and Biden supporter said it was time for the president to end his campaign. This person described Biden’s night as “the worst performance in history” and said Biden was so “bad that no one will pay attention to Trump’s lies.”

“Biden needs to drop out. No question about it,” the donor said in a text message, proposing an alternate ticket led by the governors of Maryland and Michigan.

Nonetheless, the likelihood of a brokered convention or Biden stepping aside are unlikely, a reality that even those who privately complained about Biden’s performance acknowledged.

“Only one guy can decide, and it’s him,” said one Democratic strategist.

CNN FLASH POLL: TRUMP WON

Registered voters who watched CNN’s presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump largely think Trump outperformed Biden, according to a CNN poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS, with most saying they have no real confidence in Biden’s ability to lead the country. At the same time, a majority who tuned in say it had little or no effect on their choice for president.

Debate watchers say, 67% to 33%, that Trump turned in a better performance Thursday. Prior to the debate, the same voters said, 55% to 45%, that they expected Trump to turn in a better performance than Biden. And in 2020, Biden was seen by debate watchers as outperforming Trump in both of their presidential debates.

Republicans who watched the first 2024 debate expressed broad confidence in Trump’s performance, the poll finds, with Democrats less sanguine about their party’s presumptive nominee. A near-universal 96% of GOP debate watchers say Trump did the better job in the debate, while a more modest 69% of Democratic debate watchers view Biden as the night’s winner.

MEDIA’S REACTION

New York Times: Biden Struggles as Trump Blusters

Drudge Report: Operation: Replace Biden — Debate Catastrophe

Politico: Biden Bombs, Trump Pounces

Washington Post: Biden struggles, Trump deflects questions

CNN: Biden’s poor showing and Trump’s repeated falsehoods

NBC News: A ‘hoarse’ Biden stumbles over his words during shaky performance

ABC News: Biden falters in high-stakes debate, Trump spews falsehoods

CBS News: Biden struggles early in presidential debate with hoarse voice

Axios: Biden blunders dominate combative debate with Trump

Daily Beast: Biden’s Re-Election Is Doomed by Disastrous Debate

HuffPost: Biden Primetime Disaster — Full Dem Panic — Biden Replacement Talk

President Biden has a cold, a White House official told The Hill amid the first presidential debate.

“He has a cold, started slow but obviously had started to hit his stride,” another source, who is familiar with Biden’s campaign, told The Hill.

Biden started the debate speaking very quietly, and the campaign was hit with questions about what was considered a slow start.

He faces a high-stakes moment with this debate, challenged to ease voters’ concerns about his age and whether he has the mental fitness for another four years in office. Biden, 81, would be 86 at the end of a second term, and former President Trump would be 82.

The president lost his train of thought early on in the debate, searching for the word “Medicare” at the end of his sentence.

“Making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with, the eh, COVID. Excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with,” he said, freezing up. “Look…Medicare.”

This was the moment the debate ended.

Biden: “Making sure we make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with covid, excuse me, with umm dealing with everything we had to deal with. Look, we finally beat medicare.” pic.twitter.com/lQAq6HcOIA

— T.J. Moe (@TJMoe28) June 28, 2024

Trump replied to the president’s trip-up moment, saying, “he did beat Medicare. He beat it to death, and he’s destroying Medicare.”

Moments later, Biden appeared to misspeak at the end of an answer about immigration. Trump took a jab at him, saying, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

Pete Arredondo, the former chief of the school district police in Uvalde, Texas, has been criminally charged and arrested over his actions on that day when law enforcement delayed entering the school and neutralizing the shooter.

A Uvalde County grand jury indicted Arredondo and another former district officer, Adrian Gonzales, on multiple felony charges of abandoning or endangering a child in response to their botched response to the massacre which comes 25 months after the shooter murdered 19 students and two teachers.

Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell impaneled a grand jury in January to determine if charges should be brought against any of the roughly 400 law enforcement officials who responded to the shooting at Robb Elementary School, the Texas Tribune reported.

Authorities were held back for nearly an hour and a half before federal Border Patrol agents stormed the classroom and killed the suspect.

The U.S. Department of Justice released a 600-page report earlier this year reviewing the failures of law enforcement’s response to the shooting.

“Chief Pete Arredondo of the UCISD Police Department (UCISD PD) directed officers at several points to delay making entry into classrooms 111/112 in favor of searching for keys and clearing other classrooms,” the report said.

“At several points, UCISD PD Chief Arredondo also attempted to negotiate with the subject. … Chief Arredondo, who became the de facto on-scene commander, was without his radios, having discarded them during his arrival, and communicated to others either verbally or via cell phone throughout the response.:

Of the hundreds of law enforcement officials who arrived at the school, many “believed that the subject had already been killed or that UCISD PD Chief Arredondo was in the room with the subject” because of poor communication of those who were in charge at the scene.

Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters ordered the Bible and the Ten Commandments to be incorporated into the curriculum at public schools in the state.

During a State Board of Education meeting, Walters revealed that his staff had been “looking at Oklahoma statute” and academic standards in the state regarding this decision, adding that the Bible “is a necessary historical document” that can be used to teach children about the history of the United States, among other things.

“It is crystal clear to us that in the Oklahoma Academic Standards under Title 70, on multiple occasions, the Bible is a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of Western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system,” Walters explained.

Walters continued to describe the Bible as being a “foundational” document that was “used for the Constitution and the birth” of the U.S.

“We also find major points in history that refer to the Bible, that reference the Bible,” Walters added. “We see multiple figures when….whether we’re talking about the Federalist Papers, Constitutional, conventional arguments, and Martin Luther King Jr., who use it as a tremendous impetus for the Civil Rights Movement.”

Walters continued to explain that a memo would be issued providing direction for schools in “every school district” of the state to “adhere to.”

“Every teacher, every classroom in the state, will have a Bible in the classroom and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom to ensure that this historical understanding is there for every student in the state of Oklahoma,” Walters stated.

In response to Walters’ announcement, Rachel Laser, the president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State issued a statement pointing out that “public schools are not Sunday schools.”

The organization is described as being the “only organization dedicated solely to defending the separation of church and state,” according to the website for Americans United.

“Public schools are not Sunday schools,” Laser said. “Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters has repeatedly made clear that he is incapable of distinguishing the difference and is unfit for office. His latest scheme – to mandate use of the Bible in Oklahoma public schools’ curriculum – is a transparent, unconstitutional effort to indoctrinate and religiously coerce public school students.”

This comes a week after Louisiana became the first state to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms in public schools and at state-funded universities.