The Justice Department’s inspector general on Wednesday blamed “ineffectual leadership” and not political interference for the softening of Roger Stone’s sentencing recommendation in February 2020 after his conviction for lying to Congress. The report upheld an account by then-Attorney General William P. Barr but also found that line prosecutors’ suspicions of political meddling by President Donald Trump’s administration were not unreasonable.

A longtime political confidant of Trump and a GOP consultant, Stone was found guilty by a jury in November 2019 of lying to a House panel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. At sentencing, front-line prosecutors initially notified the court that a sentence of about six to seven years would be appropriate under federal guidelines.

Within hours of that filing, and after Trump tweeted that the request was “disgraceful” and a “miscarriage of justice” that could not be allowed, Barr overruled the trial team. A second memo signed by supervisors retracted the recommendation, prompting all four prosecutors to quit the case. Some of them later said publicly that they believed they were undercut by department leaders to protect Trump’s longtime ally.

Stone was ultimately sentenced to a little more than three years behind bars, which Trump later commuted, sparing him prison time.

The Stone sentencing triggered a crisis of confidence in Barr and the Justice Department through the end of Trump’s presidency, prompting hundreds of former employees to call for his resignation and to exhort active employees to report any unethical conduct or politicization of decisions.

After a four-year investigation, the office of Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said it found no evidence of political interference and instead blamed “ineffectual leadership” by then-acting U.S. attorney Tim Shea of Washington, D.C., who was supervising the case and who had been on the job for two weeks.

Barr, who declined to be interviewed for the inspector general’s investigation, at the time denied that Trump’s Twitter tirade prompted the reversal. Instead, Barr said Shea — formerly one of his closest advisers at the department — had initially signaled to him that the recommendation would be much lower. Barr said he had been “very surprised” by the outcome.

Horowitz’s office found that “rather than taking the approach he discussed with Barr, and despite telling Barr that he believed the Guidelines range was unreasonable,” Shea authorized line prosecutors to issue a stiffer recommendation. Barr expressed to staffers that the action was not what he and Shea had discussed and needed to be “fixed,” but the inspector general found that Barr’s position was consistent before and after the recommendation was filed and before Trump tweeted.

“Based on the evidence described in this report, we concluded that the sequence of events that resulted in the Department’s extraordinary step of filing a second sentencing memorandum was largely due to Shea’s ineffectual leadership,” the report concluded.

The report added, however, that prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky’s later testimony to Congress that he and the rest of the trial team had been pressured to revise the memorandum for political reasons “was not unreasonable.” It cited statements by another prosecutor and “speculative comments” by a supervising prosecutor about possible political interference.

“We recognize that the Department’s handling of the sentencing in the Stone case was highly unusual,” given the participation of Trump political appointees Shea and Barr, the report stated. However, it concluded that absent any prohibition on their involvement, their actions were ultimately left up to their own “discretion and judgment,” including on how they would affect public perceptions of the department’s integrity and independence.

Zelinsky attorney Joshua Matz said in a statement: “The rule of law depends on prosecutors pursuing and telling the truth. My client is gratified the report confirms that he told the truth about what he saw and heard.”

Representatives for Shea, Barr and Trump could not immediately be reached for comment.

House Republicans leaders, including Speaker Mike Johnson, have asked their members not to make comments about Vice President Harris’s race after a number of GOP lawmakers referenced her identity in attacks on the likely Democratic presidential nominee.

Almost immediately after President Biden announced Sunday that he was endorsing Harris to replace him on the ticket, Republicans began their offensive, with some veering into attacks over the race and gender of the first Black and South Asian woman to serve as vice president.

In a closed-door conference meeting on Tuesday, House GOP leaders, including Johnson (La.) and Rep. Richard Hudson (N.C.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, told Republicans to focus on Harris’s policy record and time in the administration rather than go after her identity, according to multiple people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss internal conversations. Politico first reported on the meeting.

Johnson later told reporters that the he thinks Republicans should make the election “about policies, not personalities.”

Following Harris’s emergence as a likely Biden replacement, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), in a post on X, called Harris a “DEI vice president” — referring to “diversity, equity and inclusion.” House Republicans have sought to counter such diversity initiatives in federal programs through the funding process.

Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.), who defeated former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) in 2022, told a reporter that she thinks Harris is “a DEI hire.” And Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) told a CBS affiliate that Democrats chose Harris as the likely nominee “because of her ethnic background.”

In recent years, conservatives have targeted “DEI” programs — often used at workplaces to diversify the workforce — because they say they lead to minorities getting jobs over White candidates.

Other Republicans echoed Johnson’s admonition. In an interview with The Washington Post, Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) said members attacking Harris’s race “need to keep their mouths shut and just worry about their [district] race.”

“I think Vice President Harris and former president Trump is the match and let those two talk about each other,” he said.

Democrats, meanwhile, chided Republicans for attacking Harris’s identity.

“DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion. That means all of us, not some of us,” said Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. “So they’re trying to just make their attacks — some sad ones, too, that we’ve seen — but we’ll get past that, and she’ll get past that.”

“It’s a strategy that’s going to backfire,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) told CNN. “The majority of Americans — women — know what this feels like, to do everything you can to get your credentials, college education, advanced degrees, and, no matter what you do, people say you’re not enough. Or that you don’t belong in that room.”

Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said that those calling Harris a “DEI candidate” forget that she has “more experience than Trump and J.D. Vance combined times a million.”

“She worked at the state level. She was the [California] attorney general. She’s vice president of the United States. She was a senator representing one of the largest states in the entire country,” he told CNN. “These are just racist dog whistles.”

On Wednesday, Burchett said that while he wishes he hadn’t made those comments about Harris, “it was the truth.”

“It’s not racist behavior,” he told SiriusXM. “That’s the furthest thing from my mind. I just want the best players put in.”

President Biden plans to deliver a somber, reflective address from the Oval Office on Wednesday evening, speaking to the nation for the first time since his monumental decision to end both his reelection campaign and political career.

With less than six months left in his presidency, Biden is set to use the prime time address to defend his record, define his legacy and describe his vision for the rest of his term. With much of the country’s focus already shifted to Vice President Harris’s rapid ascent as Democrats’ likely presidential nominee, Biden intends to show Americans that he still plans to make an impact during his final months in office.

“There’s been a feeling that Joe Biden has disappeared from the scene and everybody is doing a eulogy for him,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. “Yet he’s still our president all the way until January. He wants to use the prime-time television address to remind people that our country is still in good stead under his leadership.”

The speech will be the first opportunity for Biden to more fully explain why he decided to drop out of the race, a move that made him the first president since 1968 to voluntarily opt against seeking another term. In his letter making the announcement on Sunday, Biden offered few details on his thought process.

“And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden wrote in the letter.

Previously, the 81-year-old Biden had dismissed questions about his advanced age and sluggish poll numbers, defiantly rejecting calls for him to step aside. His abrupt reversal upended an already turbulent campaign against Republican nominee Donald Trump, elevating Harris into the role of Democrats’ de facto leader.

As he adjusts to his new role as a lame duck, one-term president, there are signs that Biden is hoping to ramp up his presidential activity even as he prepares for the sunset of his half-century career in Washington.

“I won’t be on the ticket, but I’m still going to be fully, fully engaged,” Biden told a group of campaign staff on Monday. “I’m determined to get [as] much done as I possibly can — both foreign policy and domestic policy.”

In what could be a preview of his Oval Office address, Biden focused specifically on Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, where his administration has been pushing for a cease-fire agreement that would result in the release of hostages held by Hamas since last October. Efforts to secure such a deal have intensified in recent days, coinciding with Wednesday’s visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Biden has signaled that a hostage release — which would include several Americans — was on the “verge” of being a reality.

The president plans to meet with Netanyahu to discuss the cease-fire agreement on Thursday, a sign of the key role he would still play in world affairs.

“We’re still fighting in this fight together,” he told the campaign staffers on Monday. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Still, it is not clear how much his decision to bow out of the presidential race will change his schedule going forward. Biden, who was out of sight for five days as he recovered from covid, has continued to maintain a relatively light schedule. He had been set to travel to Texas, California and Colorado this week for campaigning and fundraising but canceled all of that travel. He plans to spend the weekend at Camp David, and aides said some of the canceled events would be rescheduled.

Republicans have responded to Biden’s exit from the race by calling on him to resign the presidency altogether, suggesting that if he is not capable of running a reelection race he should not remain in the White House. Some amplified conspiracy theories that he had died or was gravely ill.

Trump took to social media Tuesday to question whether Biden “is fit to run the U.S.A. for the next six months?”

Biden and his aides have forcefully pushed back on the idea that the president has been sidelined or otherwise diminished. The prime-time Oval Office address, just the fourth of his presidency, is designed to give the president a national platform to frame his time in office and tout his long list of accomplishments while also offering a boost to the woman who is now Democrats’ likely nominee.

Biden’s low-profile of late has had the effect of ceding the spotlight to Harris, who has been traveling the country to jump-start her presidential campaign. She used a keynote speech to more than 6,000 Black women on Wednesday to offer gratitude for his endorsement and to preview his speech.

“He will talk about not only the work, the extraordinary work that he has accomplished, but about his work for the next six months,” Harris told a gathering of the Zeta Phi Beta sorority in Indianapolis. “Joe Biden is a leader with bold vision. He cares about the future. He thinks about the future.”

In recent days, Harris’s campaign has been buoyed by a surge in enthusiasm, fundraising and support — all of which had been lacking in Biden’s campaign amid concerns about his age and health.

While the success or failure of Harris’s candidacy against Trump could determine the durability of Biden’s legacy and legislative record — much of which Trump has vowed to overturn in a second term — he must also grapple with the idea that his vice president has suddenly become a more influential figure in the Democratic Party.

But Biden’s decision to speak from the Oval Office, where presidents have often announced consequential developments on matters of domestic or global significance, highlights his ongoing role and powers, Brinkley said.

“He is a lame duck president legislatively, but he can still sign executive orders and be a world leader in trying to seek a cease-fire in the Middle East and continue funding to achieve liberation for Ukraine,” the historian noted. “He may have lost some stature here at home, but in the world of foreign policy, he’s more important than ever.”

The Democratic National Convention’s rules committee approved the process Wednesday for selecting their presidential nominee via a virtual roll call vote, to begin early next month.

Vice President Harris, who has amassed more than enough pledged support from delegates to win, is likely to be declared the official nominee by Aug. 7.

As of now, no serious candidate has emerged to challenge Harris for the nomination. If she remains the only person running, electronic voting will begin Aug. 1. If other candidates emerge, the voting may start a bit later to give them time to campaign for delegate votes, according to Democratic National Convention rules.

Any Democrat who wants to seek the presidential nomination has until Tuesday at 6 p.m. to formally declare their candidacy and obtain signatures of support from 300 delegates. At least 3,180 of the nearly 4,000 Democratic delegates have endorsed Harris, according to a survey by the Associated Press.

Political parties traditionally nominate the presidential ticket at their conventions, but Democrats decided this year to hold a virtual roll call weeks earlier than their Aug. 19 Chicago convention to ensure they meet ballot access deadlines. The issue arose due to an Aug. 7 Ohio deadline that could have kept the Democratic ticket off that state’s ballot.

The GOP-led Ohio legislature passed a law extending the deadline, but Democrats have insisted that they don’t trust Republicans in that state to adhere to it. Democrat have also pointed to late-August ballot deadlines in other states to suggest that the timeline is too tight for them to wait until the convention to nominate the party ticket.

State election officials in several states have said there are processes in place to help parties who might miss deadlines to ensure they get their candidates on the ballot. Election law experts say any legal efforts to challenge this would probably be dismissed by the courts because there is a deference to parties’ rights to have their nominees appear on the ballot.

Still, Pat Moore, a lawyer for the Democratic Party, insisted during a virtual meeting of the convention’s rules committee that they expected Republicans to be litigious about ballot deadlines, “arguing that our nominees should never have been on the ballot in the first place.”

A rules committee member asked during debate why the Democrats hadn’t considered the ballot access deadlines when they planned a late-August convention.

“Unfortunately, 2020 demonstrated that as far as election litigation is concerned, we are in a new world,” Moore said. “Will we face litigation no matter what? I think that’s safe to say … but accepting that we will face that litigation does not mean that we are powerless to strengthen our position.”

The new rules also note that there will still be a state-by-state roll call for the Democratic ticket at the Chicago convention but described those votes as “celebratory and ceremonial.”

Nine days ago, Donald Trump picked a running mate in Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) that projected confidence about the race ahead. Trump seemed to be choosing a desire to guide his party in a more MAGA direction over expanding his base to improve his chances in the 2024 election.

The flip side of that, as I noted at the time, was risk. Vance didn’t pack the same base-expanding potential as other candidates (such as Sen. Tim Scott, Sen. Marco Rubio and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum). And Vance’s only campaign — for Senate in 2022 — was nothing to write home about. Despite winning, he polled as unpopular and performed significantly worse than any other statewide Ohio GOP candidate.

A week after Vance’s big introduction at the Republican National Convention, that risk looms large.

At least five quality polls out this week have gauged Vance’s image, and each shows that more people dislike him than like him. They show he is between two and nine points underwater.

As CNN’s Harry Enten noted Tuesday, that appears to be without recent precedent. Vice-presidential picks usually get a honeymoon period, and none has been in such negative territory so soon after their debut on the biggest stage.

But how much does that mean at this early juncture?

Let’s first dive into the numbers, from the CNN, NPR-PBS-Marist College, Reuters-Ipsos, Quinnipiac University and Economist-YouGov polls:

• Vance’s best numbers are in the Marist poll (31 percent favorable versus 33 percent unfavorable). But in every other poll, he’s between six and nine points underwater.
• Vance appears to struggle with independent voters. In four of the five polls, his unfavorable rating with them is double digits higher than his favorable rating. (The fifth poll shows him eight points underwater.)
• He doesn’t appear to have improved his image in recent days. The Reuters-Ipsos poll showed him going from six points negative last week to seven points negative today. CNN showed him going from seven points negative last month to six points negative now. In both cases, many more voters have rendered judgments on him than before, but those reviews haven’t been positive.

We are, of course, in unusual times. Vance’s introduction was overshadowed by the assassination attempt on Trump just two days before. It has also come amid plenty of focus on the Democratic side — and particularly whether President Biden would end his campaign, as he ultimately did Sunday. Perhaps Vance didn’t really have the chance to win people’s attention (and approval).

He also enters the stage at a time when voters are particularly sour on national politics. It’s rare to see any politician be popular; Trump, Biden and Vice President Harris are all also viewed more negatively than positively.

But generally speaking, VP picks are different — and more popular than the people who pick them. Hillary Clinton was double digits underwater for most of the 2016 campaign, but Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) was pretty popular soon after Clinton selected him as her running mate. Biden had middling numbers in 2020, but Harris’s unpopularity from her 2020 presidential primary campaign soon reversed.

And Trump’s previous running mate, Mike Pence, was generally popular despite Trump’s being as much as 20 or 30 points underwater down the home stretch of the 2020 campaign.

It did take some time for Pence and Harris to improve their images — it didn’t happen immediately after the conventions — but voters were at least initially evenly split on them.

And, notably, Vance’s numbers are also worse than those for most of the big names being floated as potential running mates for Harris. Both Reuters-Ipsos and Economist-YouGov also tested such names as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Sen. Mark Kelly (Ariz.) and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. In each case, about as many Americans liked them as disliked them.

So it’s evident that Vance has some work to do and that his introduction hasn’t exactly gone swimmingly.

That doesn’t mean this is a major liability for Trump; Vance isn’t so unpopular that he would seem to be a reason for Trump-inclined voters to abandon Trump. The top of the ticket is what matters to the vast majority of voters, even as Trump’s running mate could matter somewhat more, given that Trump is 78.

But it does point to what may be a missed opportunity — the opportunity to put forward a running mate who appeals to voters who might be skeptical of Trump or gives them something Trump doesn’t.

That mattered less under the previous setup, when Trump appeared to be a pretty strong favorite to defeat Biden. If Harris can make the race more competitive and Vance’s numbers don’t improve — both big ifs — you can bet that more than a few people will begin to question the wisdom of a decision that seemed dicey even at the time.

An Instagram video posted Wednesday shows hundreds of mealworms, maggots and crickets crawling around the Watergate Hotel where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is staying during his visit to D.C., raising questions about how protesters who claimed to unleash the vermin were able to get onto the property as the area has been under tight security.

The video, posted jointly to Instagram by the Palestinian Youth Movement and its DMV chapter, depicts swarms of crickets on the hotel’s floor and claims protesters triggered the hotel’s fire alarm “to ensure that there will be no rest before Netanyahu and Congress disgraces themselves in front of the world” when the Israeli leader addressed Congress in a joint meeting Wednesday. The video also shows maggots and mealworms crawling across a table set with drinking glasses as Israeli and American flags stand side by side in the background.

An official familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss security matters said the video appeared to be authentic.

Residents of the Watergate complex said U.S. Secret Service and D.C. police set up checkpoints over the weekend to vet anyone entering the property.

“The Watergate facility has an expansive footprint and remains open for businesses, residences and guests,” said Abel Trevino, a spokesperson for a public safety team made up of local and federal agencies staffing Netanyahu’s visit to the District. “At no time was there any threat to our protectees.”

The hotel, whose answering machine ironically greets callers with “There’s no need to break in” as a nod to its storied history, said in a statement it was aware of the video and “the unfortunate incident that occurred at the property yesterday.”

“Our top priority is the safety and well-being of our guests and staff,” the statement from a hotel spokesperson said. “We took the necessary steps to ensure the property has been sanitized and is now operating as normal. We are cooperating fully with authorities, who are handling the situation. As this is an open case, we are unable to provide any further details at this time.”

A D.C. Fire and EMS spokesperson said in a statement that the agency had fire inspectors stationed at Netanyahu’s hotel “at the request of the United States Secret Service,” and that after the alarm sounded, fire officials “determined there was no fire emergency and any fire department response was cancelled.”

Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Zaid Khatib, 27, an organizer with the DMV chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement said an anonymous tipster sent the video to his group, which in turn posted it Wednesday morning.

Khatib said he was not involved in this protest and did not know who was responsible, but he said protesters have also held noise demonstrations outside the hotel every morning and night to make sure Netanyahu “will enjoy no rest while he is here.”

The releasing of maggots, he said, reflects “the fact that all of D.C. from organizations to individuals reject the stay of a war criminal in our city.”

Khatib said he does not know if there are more protests planned for inside the Watergate Hotel.

“It reflects a tremendous security failure on their part,” he said, referring to law enforcement. “The city of D.C. and the United States government has stolen tens of millions of dollars to roll out the red carpet for a war criminal and even then, they can’t stop something as simple as maggots being dropped … at the Watergate Hotel.”

A defiant Benjamin Netanyahu, in an address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, dismissed as “utter nonsense” criticisms by the United Nations, human rights groups and others that his government has committed war crimes in Gaza and derided protesters as “idiots” and tools of Iran.

The embattled Israeli prime minister told U.S. lawmakers that Israel will settle for “nothing less” than total victory over Hamas, and described a vision for a postwar Gaza seemingly at odds with the terms of a peace deal being pursued by the Biden administration. The fate of Israel and the United States are inextricably linked, he claimed, making the case that U.S. investments in Israel’s war aims also serve to defend the United States and “all democracies.”

“We help keep Americans’ boots off the ground,” Netanyahu thundered, claiming that “Israel fights on the front line of civilization.” He praised the United States’ extensive annual military assistance, but implored Congress to deliver more. “Give us the tools faster, and we’ll finish the job faster,” he said.

“This is not a clash of civilizations. It’s a clash between barbarism and civilization. It’s a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life,” Netanyahu said to cheers and applause in the House chamber, as outside the Capitol throngs of police deployed pepper spray to keep protesters at a distance.

Netanyahu’s address, spanning about an hour, comes as his far-right government nears the start of its tenth month of war in Gaza, where local authorities say 39,000 Palestinians have been killed amid daily bombardment and famine, and as a majority of Israelis say they want him to leave office.

He arrived on Capitol Hill in a bulletproof motorcade, passing through a phalanx of security as protesters marched through downtown Washington, condemning the Israeli leader as an accused war criminal and calling on the Biden administration to end its weapons shipments to Netanyahu’s government.

In his remarks, Netanyahu accused pro-Palestinian demonstrators of standing with the Hamas militants who staged October’s savage attack on Israel, triggering the Gaza war.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” he bellowed, alleging that Iran, Israel’s sworn enemy in the Middle East, is funding such protests throughout the United States and chiding their participants “useful idiots” and antisemites.

Although more than 50 lawmakers said they were boycotting the speech, there were only a few empty seats in the House chamber. Some had been filled by guests, including a group of Israeli soldiers highlighted by Netanyahu in his speech. One, who responded heroically during the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 “killed many terrorists, and saved many lives,” he said.

“I am past pissed off. I am past upset. I am absolutely ashamed of what is happening,” Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) told reporters on a conference call alongside other Democrats and former government officials who resigned from their jobs in protest of the administration’s Israel policy. “Our government has been actively complicit in genocide every step of the way,” Bush added.

Many of the Democrats who did attend did so with resignation. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) was one, saying earlier this week that he had chosen to show up out of respect for Israel but that he considers Netanyahu to be “the worst leader in Jewish history.”

More than anything, however, Netanyahu’s fourth speech before a joint session of Congress — a privilege afforded to few foreign leaders, and to Netanyahu more than any other in U.S. history — underscored Israel’s staying power as a fixture of American foreign policy and as the largest recipient of U.S. military aid. If Democrats have wavered in their support, Republicans, led by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), have welcomed Netanyahu with open arms, praising his leadership since Hamas launched its cross-border attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw upward of 250 taken hostage.

The Biden administration and many congressional Democrats, who have grown increasingly vocal in their displeasure with Netanyahu’s conduct of the war, have nevertheless shied away from inflicting consequences on a key U.S. ally, leaving unimpeded the flow of billions of dollars in weapons, intelligence, and diplomatic commitments central to the two nations’ security relationship.

The administration has also been at pains in recent weeks to stress the fervent, months-long efforts by senior officials to negotiate a lasting cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas that would see the return of the remaining hostages and pave the way toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. Officials have claimed repeatedly that a deal is within reach, with a State Department spokesman, Matt Miller, telling reporters earlier Wednesday that Washington is working “to bridge the final differences.”

But behind closed doors, officials and even some former Israeli officials, have acknowledged that Netanyahu and his cabinet have shown little interest in ending the war. Families of Israeli and American hostages in Gaza also have increasingly criticized Netanyahu for failing to deliver their loved ones from captivity.

“This administration has been pretty clear with us consistently where they thought the pressure needed to be,” Jon Polin, the father of American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, told The Washington Post in an interview. “They have told us when they thought it needed to be Hamas — and right now their belief is it’s more in Israel’s court.”

Netanyahu’s former Army chief of staff-turned-opposition leader, Benny Gantz, also on Wednesday accused Netanyahu of intentionally delaying a cease-fire deal by months, and leaving more Israeli hostages to die.

Netanyahu told his audience Wednesday that his government was engaged in efforts to bring home the hostages, and that when he spoke to the hostages’ families earlier this week he “promised them this: I will not rest until all their loved ones are home.”

As Netanyahu spoke to American lawmakers, doctors in the Gaza Strip said the ongoing carnage from Israeli bombardment and severe shortages in critical medical supplies had rendered them unable to save those they might have been able to under normal circumstances.

Almost 200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Monday, when Israeli forces launched a fresh operation in the city of Khan Younis, targeting Hamas militants whom it accused of launching rockets from the area. Doctors in the largest remaining hospital in southern Gaza have said in recent days that their wards have been deluged with civilian casualties, leaving blood banks near dry and an emergency room filled with children.

“I pulled a curtain back and there was just a small girl alone, dying,” Javid Abdelmoneim, a medical team leader with Doctors Without Borders, told The Post this week by phone from Gaza. “In a system where there were staff and supplies, and she was the one trauma case, we could have saved her,” he added. But they couldn’t. “She looked like she was eight.”

Although Vice President Harris, who has replaced President Biden atop the Democratic presidential ticket, declined to preside over the address, an aide emphasized her “unwavering commitment to the security of Israel.” Both she and Biden will meet with Netanyahu on Thursday instead.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Netanyahu would travel to meet with him at his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, their first meeting since Trump expressed his fury toward the Israeli leader for recognizing Biden’s electoral victory in 2020.

Republicans have sought to capitalize on deepening liberal opposition to the U.S.-Israel relationship, particularly on college campuses, and have framed Democratic criticisms as nothing short of anti-Semitic betrayal in Israel’s hour of need. The GOP, Republican leaders have argued, is Israel’s only true ally.

“This is a moment for moral clarity, and it is unconscionable to us that the president of the United States and some of the leaders in the Senate are unable or unwilling to stand and say what is good and what is evil,” Johnson said last week.

Netanyahu also is no stranger to flame-throwing in U.S. politics. He used his last address to Congress, in 2015, to blast the Obama administration’s efforts toward an Iran nuclear deal, infuriating the White House.

While he sought to tread a more bipartisan line on Wednesday, praising the Capitol as a “citadel of democracy,” and avoiding partisan distinctions, he has made little effort in recent years to disguise his preference for the GOP, which has abstained from questioning Israel’s human rights record and its treatment of the Palestinians.

Steve Hendrix in Tel Aviv, Louisa Loveluck in Jerusalem, Marianna Sotomayor, Mariana Alfaro and Ellie Silverman contributed to this report.

When President Biden announced he was suspending his campaign for president, Donald Trump and some of his supporters stitched together a series of conspiracy theories about Biden’s health, his motives for dropping out, and even whether he was still alive.

Those false assertions built on years of reality-bending messages from Trump and others on the right that have helped polarize the electorate and shaken Americans’ belief in a shared set of facts. While political conspiracy theories have long been a feature of American life, today’s diffuse army of conspiracists are especially able to sow doubt, experts say, and are poised to undermine faith in the coming election less than four years after such false conspiracy theories fomented a violent attack on the Capitol.

Hours after Biden said on Sunday that he was dropping out of the race, which came days after he received his covid diagnosis, Trump set the tone in a social media post. “Does anybody really believe that Crooked Joe had Covid? No,” Trump wrote, challenging the announcement from Biden’s own physician describing his symptoms.

In the same post, Trump claimed, without evidence, that Biden “had wanted to get out” of the presidential race since the night of the debate that sparked concerns nationally over the ability of Biden, 81, to serve a second term in the White House. (Biden acceded to calls that he resign from the race only after weeks of pressure from members of his own party.)

“What happened to Joe Biden,” Trump adviser Chris LaCivita posted on X on Monday. “Where is he? We haven’t seen him since July 17th … around the time he ‘got covid’.”

“When was the last time anyone saw Joe Biden?” asked Charlie Kirk, the founder and CEO of Talking Points USA, a youth-focused conservative advocacy group, who spoke at last week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Trump and his allies provided no evidence for their conjecture, and the false assertions built up to the allegation advanced by some on the far right that Vice President Harris’s elevation to succeed Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate amounted to an illegal government takeover.

“President Trump is merely asking relevant questions — something the media should do after they were exposed for helping Biden cover up his cognitive decline for the past four years,” said Steven Cheung, communications director for Trump’s campaign.

Even before Biden announced he was suspending his campaign, Trump supporters predicted his covid diagnosis would keep him from running. Joey Mannarino, a self-described conservative populist with half a million followers on X, posted that Biden would get long covid, a condition he dismissed as fake, and quit the race. “Just wait,” he wrote.

The day Biden released a letter announcing his decision to leave the race, Laura Loomer, a right-wing anti-Muslim activist with a history of publishing falsehoods, wrote to her more than a million followers on X that she had heard from an unnamed source that Biden had not written the letter. Feminist author turned conspiracist Naomi Wolf reposted Loomer’s message. Another account, Slave to Christ, posted an image of Biden’s signature at the base of the letter, claiming that it did not match previous examples of his penmanship.

Wolf in turn reposted the message, which spurred hedge fund manager Bill Ackman to chime in, questioning the authenticity of Biden’s signature to his 1.3 million X followers. The conspiracy theories persisted even after Biden called in to Harris’s televised appearance Monday at campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., to rally staffers’ support for the vice president — his first public remarks since dropping out of the race.

Kirk on Monday posted on X that he had had “a weird lead” on a story from a source close to the police department in Las Vegas, where Biden visited last week, that contradicted the “official story” that Biden had contracted covid. Kirk’s source, he said, indicated that the U.S. Secret Service had told the local police that an “emergency situation” involving Biden required a “medevac” to transport him to Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore. “Apparently the rumor mill in the police department was that Joe Biden was dying or possibly already dead,” Kirk wrote to his more than 3 million followers. Kirk did not specify why his unnamed source asserted that Biden would travel to Johns Hopkins. He arrived later that evening at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

Kirk wrote that he had dismissed the tip at the time, but given that Biden had not been seen in public for several days, Kirk wrote that he was curious “if there is more to the official story than what they’re telling us.”

Tucker Carlson read Kirk’s dispatch on his online show hosted on X, and several conservative outlets picked up the report.

When asked about the reports, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department provided a statement that it “was notified that President Joe Biden was sick on July 17th during his visit to Las Vegas” but were not informed of the nature of his illness. “As a precaution, LVMPD proactively began to shut down roads” leading to the local hospital, before the Secret Service told the police that Biden was heading directly to the airport.

“I think it’s clear that there was an undisclosed medical event on July 17th,” Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Kirk, texted, citing the planned road closures and additional anonymous police sources from another journalist, but no medical evidence. After Kirk received a tip, he shared his information with his audience to try to get more detail, Kolvet added. “Joe Biden either recovered quickly, or they’re not telling us the entire story. It’s also very curious that he dropped out of the race only four days later. We still have a lot of questions, but we followed a lead and have confirmed much of the original story.”

Heading into the last months of the 2024 presidential campaign, which has been upended by extraordinary events including an assassination attempt on Trump and Biden’s decision to step away from the race, researchers are girding for conspiracy theories to take root with every news event.

“It’s a common tactic to take a shred of information that’s in the news and find a way to align it with an existing conspiratorial worldview, which in this case is that the Deep State and the current administration are out to get Trump,” said Megan Squire, deputy director for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center. She explained that conspiracy theories about Biden’s ill health serve to demonstrate that the federal government is dishonestly propping up a Trump adversary in order to undermine the former president. “Most of these theories are designed to position Trump as the hero of the story,” she added.

Some figures on the right attempted to tie the attempted assassination to Biden’s stepping out of the race.

“Biden didn’t drop out of the race until after the attempts to imprison and assassinate Donald Trump failed. Do you think that is coincidence?” Sean Davis, co-founder and CEO of the conservative Federalist site, said in a post shared on X.

“All political conspiracy theories seem to eventually converge,” said Melissa Ryan, digital strategist at Card Strategies, where she specializes in studying online hate and conspiracy theories. She added that the close proximity in time between Trump’s shooting and Biden’s withdrawal made it easier for the conspiracy-minded to link the two events.

But investigators have found no evidence connecting Biden or the Democratic Party to the gunman who attempted to kill Trump, nor have they identified a particular ideology or motive driving the shooter, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old killed at the scene. Crooks had searched online days earlier for information about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and he used a rifle with a collapsible stock that may have made it easier for him to disguise the weapon before climbing onto a roof, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

The current moment has brought conspiratorial thinking, which emerged on the fringes of politics during Trump’s first term, into the center of a major-party platform, experts said.

“The issue isn’t so much the theories themselves,” said Joseph E. Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami who specializes in conspiracy theories. “The issue is that you have Donald Trump and his allies in the conservative media and the government using a lot of conspiracy theories, and that’s where it becomes a major problem, because they have political elites like presidential candidates and senators and representatives and cable news channels and internet personalities with big audiences … pushing this stuff to audiences who trust them. [And] that’s really bad. And that’s where we need to be focused.”

Before Harris addressed the nation Tuesday from a suburb of Milwaukee in her first rally, Worldnet Daily, the far-right conspiracy theory publication that was a leading voice falsely claiming that former president Barack Obama was not born in the U.S., recirculated online posts about Biden stepping away from the race and asked, “Did we just witness a coup?”

The inability to agree on a set of facts leads to the perception of an information vacuum, said Squire, such that even with more information, the vacuum never fills up. “When you have a lack of information,” she said, “the world we’ve built is going to fill that with garbage.”

Jeremy Merrill contributed research.