Biden faces fresh wave of Democratic defections as campaign tries to press forward
CNN
President Joe Biden faced a new round of defections Friday from Democratic lawmakers publicly calling on him to leave the presidential race, even as his campaign sought to project a message that he isn’t going anywhere.
President Joe Biden faced a new round of defections Friday from Democratic lawmakers publicly calling on him to leave the presidential race, even as his campaign sought to project a message that he isn’t going anywhere. One day after the Republican National Convention, new public calls for Biden to drop out from nearly a dozen lawmakers – including Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and California Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a close ally to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi – grew the list of congressional Democrats to 32 in all. Two House Democrats close to Pelosi, speaking on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity and rawness in the party right now, attributed Friday’s new statements – especially Lofgren’s letter to Biden – to the former speaker and her belief that it is critical for the president and his allies to understand the effort to push him aside is not going away after the Republican convention, despite the campaign’s efforts to quash it. The president is described by a source with direct knowledge as “seething” at Pelosi. This source said the sentiment only grew Friday when Lofgren, Pelosi’s longtime close lieutenant, released her letter urging Biden to step aside. CNN has reached out to Pelosi’s camp and the Biden campaign for comment on this reporting. It is a remarkable break between two powerful party elders and longtime allies in enacting key elements of the Biden agenda. Aides to Vice President Kamala Harris inside and outside the campaign have also expressed unhappiness with Pelosi and her talk of a quick process to find a new candidate should Biden step aside.
FBI says it has disrupted major Chinese hacking operation that threatened US critical infrastructure
The FBI has used a court order to seize control of a network of hundreds of thousands of hacked internet routers and other devices that Chinese government-linked hackers were using to threaten critical infrastructure in the US and overseas, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday.
The Federal Reserve is preparing to cut interest rates for the first time in the Biden era after the White House spent the last three years grappling with Americans’ dissatisfaction with the cost of living, raising new questions about the health of the economy and the impact on voters at the ballot box.
Israeli officials notified the US that the country was going to carry out an operation in Lebanon on Tuesday but did not give any details about what they were planning, according to three sources familiar with the matter, including in a call between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant early Tuesday morning.