President Biden sent a message to restive Democrats on Capitol Hill at the beginning of the week in a sternly worded letter: I am staying in this race, and you need to accept that.

But many Democratic lawmakers have instead painted a picture of a president deep in thought over whether to continue his reelection campaign following a halting debate performance, insisting that Biden is close to making a “decision” on his political future. Their carefully crafted statements praise Biden while also rejecting the president’s contention that his candidacy is a settled matter after the debate two weeks ago.

“I have complete confidence that Joe Biden will do the patriotic thing for our country,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said to one reporter when asked on Wednesday if he believes Biden should step aside. “He’s going to make that decision. He’s never disappointed me; he’s always put patriotism and the country ahead of himself and I’m going to respect the decision he makes.’

The subtle rhetoric may be a tad removed from the current reality, but it avoids directly confronting a president who has been described as dug in on his candidacy and angry at the constant questioning from his own party. It also leaves the door open for lawmakers to notch up the pressure in future days and sends a message that they’d be more than open to a different decision from Biden.

The most high-profile Hill Democrat to frame the issue this way is undoubtedly former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who praised Biden in a television interview on Wednesday. But she also urged the president to quickly decide whether he is still running.

“We’re all encouraging him to make that decision, because time is running short,” Pelosi said.

The strategy, ignoring Biden’s public posture on his own run, risks being perceived as condescending to some, however.

“This is beginning to feel like when you turn in a paper and the teacher gives it back and tells you to rewrite it and then hand it in again,” Democratic strategist Rebecca Katz joked on X.

But it may be a way to gently encourage a change of heart. Some lawmakers say they believe Biden when he says he is committed to running but are still hoping the incoming raft of dismal polls could change his mind. On Wednesday, Cook Political report analyst David Wasserman described Trump’s lead in the polls post-debate as “the most drastic shift in the race all year.”

When asked about lawmakers’ contention that Biden needs to “decide” whether he’s running or not, a Biden campaign official pointed to his letter to lawmakers on Monday, in which Biden declared, “I am firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump.”

Biden added that it was time for discussions to “end” about a different way forward. In an MSNBC interview, he also dismissed “elites” who have questions about his ability to run, arguing they’re not listening to regular voters. That comment angered many lawmakers, according to two people familiar with the reaction who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Neither Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) nor House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) have joined in on framing Biden as needing to make a “decision.”

“As I have made clear repeatedly publicly and privately, I support President Biden and remain committed to ensuring Donald Trump is defeated in November,” Schumer said in a statement Wednesday evening.

The careful rhetoric shows the tightrope lawmakers are walking as they seek to send a message to Biden without permanently alienating him if he stays in the race or further hurting Democrats’ chances in the election by airing more negative perceptions of Biden.

So far, just one Democratic senator, Peter Welch of Vermont, has called on Biden to step aside. But several more privately expressed their concerns that he would not be able to win in November in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, according to two people briefed on the gathering. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) later aired his concerns publicly on CNN, saying that Democrats could lose in a “landslide” with Biden atop the ticket, while stopping short of calling on him to bow out of the race.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Biden’s campaign co-chair, downplayed the importance of Bennet’s comments.

“I respect my dear friend Michael Bennet; I do not share his views,” he said. “We have 51 members who caucus with the Democrats and have there been a dozen others who have come forth and said, ‘now that Michael has shared that they share the same view?’ I don’t think so.”

Some lawmakers, including Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), have affirmatively made the case that Biden is the best person to lead the presidential ticket and can defeat Trump. “He’s our guy,” Fetterman told reporters this week. But many share deep concerns they are headed for defeat, even if they are divided about the right path forward.

On Thursday, top Biden officials Mike Donilon, Jen O’Malley Dillon and Steve Ricchetti will brief Senate Democrats at lunch at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Until then, lawmakers are urging Biden to make a decision, even if he says he already has.

“I think he’s the kind of person that in the end it’s not going to be about him, it’s going to be about what’s best for the country,” said Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.).

And is the best decision for Biden to continue running, a reporter asked? “I think what’s best is to win,’ he said.

Mariana Alfaro and Paul Kane contributed to this report

“Something I’ve heard that doesn’t seem to be being covered are the Epstein files. These files were released. And, like, Donald Trump is sort of all over this. There are pictures of him with Epstein. He’s taken multiple plane flights with Epstein with young girls on board. He’s in call logs with Epstein. One of the highest trending hashtags on Twitter right now is about Trump and Epstein. … You all might want to look at that. Because that’s highly disturbing.”

— Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), remarks to reporters, July 9

Florida Circuit Judge Luis Delgado unsealed nearly 200 pages of grand jury testimony last week related to the 2006 Florida case involving disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was alleged to have raped teenage girls. In 2019, after he was charged in federal court with sex trafficking of minors, guards found Epstein dead in his cell at a federal jail in New York. Investigators said he hanged himself.

The documents showed that prosecutors had heard testimony about Epstein assaulting teenage girls before they cut a plea deal with him in 2008 that was kept from victims and provided for lenient work-release. “The details in the record will be outrageous to decent people,” Delgado wrote in his order. “The testimony taken by the grand jury concerns activity ranging from grossly unacceptable to rape — all of the conduct at issue is sexually deviant, disgusting, and criminal.”

But Donald Trump’s name never appears anywhere in the transcripts.

That hasn’t stopped Democrats — perhaps seeking to distract from President Biden’s travails — from suggesting on social media that there’s a disturbing connection between the former president and a sex predator. Some social media posts have claimed that Trump was mentioned in a draft indictment released last week, but that’s false. Only 2006 grand jury testimony was released.

Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald journalist whose diligent reporting forced a reopening of the Epstein case, has valiantly tried to point out the errors on X, but the misinformation keeps spreading. “I’ve come to believe that the American public won’t pay for the truth,” she lamented. “They would rather believe the lies they get for free on the internet.”

(Trump may have fueled some of this speculation by hedging in a recent Fox News interview about whether he’d seek to release all documents related to Epstein. “You don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there,” he said.)

When we asked Lieu’s office for evidence to back up his speculation, we were supplied with a variety of old Washington Post articles that explored the links between Trump and Epstein. But, contrary to Lieu’s statement, none shows that Trump engaged in anything inappropriate. Let’s explore what’s in the public record.

‘Pictures of him with Epstein’

Trump has acknowledged that he and Epstein were in the same Palm Beach social circle decades ago. But their relations appeared to have ended by the time Epstein’s legal troubles began.

There are numerous photos of Trump and Epstein. In 2019, NBC News released video of Trump keeping company with Epstein at a 1992 party with NFL cheerleaders. At one point, Trump points out someone to Epstein and appears to say, “She’s hot!”

In 2002, Trump was quoted in a profile of Epstein: “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

But as The Washington Post reported, the relationship soured in 2004 after the two men battled over acquiring a choice Palm Beach property, an oceanfront mansion called Maison de l’Amitie. Trump won the auction, and phone records — the call logs Lieu referenced — indicate that the two men did not communicate after that. Two weeks after the auction, Palm Beach police received a tip that young women were seen coming and going from Epstein’s home — which led to the grand jury investigation.

‘Multiple plane flights with Epstein’

Many prominent people, including former president Bill Clinton, flew on Epstein’s jet. Trump took at least seven flights with Epstein in the 1990s, according to flight logs released as evidence in the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, an Epstein associate who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping him sexually abuse girls. Lieu claimed that “young girls were on board,” but no evidence of that has surfaced. The ages of passengers were not recorded in the logs.

Trump took flights between Palm Beach and New York City airports. A June 1994 flight lists some of the other passengers as Marla and Tiffany, an apparent reference to Trump’s then-wife, Marla Maples, and their less than 1-year-old daughter.

‘Highly disturbing’

Trump was briefly mentioned in about 1,000 pages of documents released in January in a separate case involving a defamation suit filed against Maxwell by an alleged victim, Virginia Giuffre. (Lieu’s staff sent an article about those documents.)

But these were minor references.

In a 2016 deposition of Giuffre that was released, she was asked about Trump. Giuffre said she had been recruited by Maxwell when she was a 17-year-old spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago.

“I don’t think Donald Trump participated in anything,” she said. “That would have to be another assumption. I never saw or witnessed Donald Trump participate in those acts, but was he in the house of Jeffrey Epstein.”

She said that anyone who visited Epstein’s house would have seen his many nude photos of women displayed on the walls. “These are salacious acts of girls, young girls doing things to each other that would be considered child pornography,” Giuffre testified. “If you walked foot into Jeffrey Epstein’s house and you went in there and you continued to be an acquaintance of his then you would have to know what was going on there.”

Meanwhile, Johanna Sjoberg, one of Epstein’s other alleged victims, was quoted as saying Epstein’s plane made an unplanned stop in Atlantic City between 2001 to 2006. There is no indication they saw Trump, and she said she never gave Trump a massage.

The documents also included emails from an accuser who made allegations against Trump but then withdrew them. (Separately, a woman with the pseudonyms Katie Johnson and Jane Doe accused Trump of raping her in Epstein’s home when she was 13; those filings were dismissed or withdrawn years ago.)

In a statement, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said: “Ted is a total degenerate and loser who continues to beclown himself. He has let Trump Derangement Syndrome rot his brain and, instead of getting the proper care he so desperately needs, has allowed himself to be the laughingstock of all his colleagues, who secretly joke about his glaring short comings.”

Lieu’s office did not comment beyond providing links to articles.

The Pinocchio Test

As we have documented, 17 women have claimed Trump engaged in sexual misconduct. A Manhattan jury found that Trump sexually abused and defamed one woman on our list. But no credible allegation has emerged to connect Trump to any of Epstein’s crimes.

Lieu is a member of Congress who doesn’t need to rely on dubious social media posts for his information — especially if he’s going to make a statement like this. Trump wasn’t mentioned in the latest batch of Epstein documents. He was barely mentioned in the earlier batches. Rest assured — if Trump were prominently mentioned, it would have been a huge story.

Lieu earns Four Pinocchios.

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For years, Democrats mocked Republicans for their politically craven fealty to former president Donald Trump.

They rolled their eyes when their Republican colleagues claimed they just hadn’t seen the latest tweet. They talked knowingly about how, behind closed doors, many Republicans conceded that, yes, they wished Trump would just disappear — Rumpelstiltskin-style, in a poof of smoke — never to be heard from again.

But now, they’re borrowing a page from the Republican playbook.

Following President Biden’s halting and politically damaging debate performance on June 27, Democratic lawmakers and strategists who regularly lambasted Republicans are offering one, often painfully candid, assessment in private (Biden cannot beat Trump and needs to step aside) and a different, less-than-truthful one in public (Biden had “one bad night,” but he’s up for the job of beating Trump).

They have also begun offering variations of the “I just need to see more of Biden to feel confident in supporting him” excuse — their version of the fail-safe Republican “I didn’t see the tweet” chestnut.

“We’ve spent years shaming Republicans for blindly following Trump off the proverbial cliffs, especially when it meant an electoral disaster for their party, like the cycles of 2018, 2020, and 2022,” said Michael LaRosa, a former Biden White House communications official. “It turns out, we’re just as loyal to the name or leader of our party, as well, even if it invites political risk for everyone in the party running on the ballot.”

In an op-ed in the New York Times on Wednesday, actor George Clooney, a prominent Democratic donor, also said the quiet part out loud, calling on party leaders “to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw.”

“We love to talk about how the Republican Party has ceded all power, and all of the traits that made it so formidable with Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, to a single person who seeks to hold on to the presidency, and yet most of our members of Congress are opting to wait and see if the dam breaks,” Clooney wrote, before urging Democrats to “speak the truth.”

Of course, the situations are hardly analogous. With Trump — who can be bullying, cruel, misogynistic and routinely traffics in racist tropes and falsehoods — issues of character are what have long repelled Republican voters and officials alike.

During the 2016 presidential race, an “Access Hollywood” video emerged of Trump boasting about groping women, and more than a dozen women came forward accusing him of sexual misconduct. Last year, a New York jury found that Trump sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll and, more recently, another New York jury convicted him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He also refused to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, encouraging his supporters to do the same — a decision that ultimately contributed to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

By contrast, Biden’s only sin in the minds of his supporters right now is aging, and publicly grappling with the indignities and fragility of entering his ninth decade.

“I reject the scale of Biden’s failures compared to Trump’s — it’s just not a comparison,” said Tim Miller, a former Republican strategist and ardent Trump critic who works as a writer for the Bulwark website.

But, Miller added, he nonetheless sees similarities between his former party and how Democrats are handling the current moment.

“The gap between private and public as a means of self-protection, of career protection, is very similar — shrouding that careerist unwillingness to say the truth in some fake, high-minded notion that they’re doing the right thing in private,” Miller said.

Even here, Democrats on the whole are being more candid than many Republicans beholden to Trump. So far, 12 House members and one senator have called for Biden to step aside as the party’s presidential nominee, and several other lawmakers from both chambers have gone public with their concerns. On Wednesday, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pointedly told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Biden — who has repeatedly said he has no plans to bow out — needs to make a “decision” on whether he is running for president.

During the Trump years — and even now — the Republicans who dared to publicly utter what many of their colleagues privately whispered could almost be boiled down to a lonely trio: Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, and Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah. (The two House members no longer hold office, and Romney is retiring when his term ends at the end of this year.)

Will Ritter, co-founder of Poolhouse, a center-right ad agency, said that during Trump’s presidency, the constant message from Democrats was “‘brokered convention,’ ‘25th Amendment,’ ‘protecting the party,’ ‘protecting democracy.’”

Now, however, Ritter said, the Democrats “are headed over a cliff,” and the new message has become “one bad night” and “he’s always had a stutter” — a reference to comments from Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a co-chair of Biden’s campaign, who said Tuesday that Biden has long had a stutter and should not be held to “too high a standard.”

“We’re getting honest talk from George Clooney, and cute word games from almost every elected Democrat,” he said.

Since Biden’s debate debut, the president’s team has also lost credibility with the media — a public rupture that comes after years of Biden aides browbeating reporters for daring to broach the age of the 81-year-old president.

“The other point Republican staffers have just been laughing about is how finally the Biden administration is getting a big dose of what the normal Republican candidate faces in terms of the press,” said Elise Jordan, a former George W. Bush staffer and aide on the 2016 presidential campaign of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who now considers herself an independent. “It’s just so much harder to deal with, and it’s not going to end, either.”

Biden, too, is exhibiting some characteristics that are shared by Trump and some other politicians. He distrusts negative polls. He has begun lashing out at “elites” and the media. He is now relying heavily on what he personally sees and hears, in situations tailored only to feature his supporters. And he has surrounded himself with a small, insular circle reluctant to bring him bad news.

Jordan said her takeaway from watching Biden’s interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos last Friday was that Biden “was absolutely Trumpish.”

“He was so arrogant and seemed to feel entitled to the office, not that it was an honor to serve, and he didn’t seem to be concerned with democracy, which is allegedly the whole reason for his candidacy,” Jordan said.

In some ways, the about-face from many Democrats may not matter. A key voting bloc this election cycle is the “double hater” voters disillusioned with both major-party options. Nonetheless, many remain driven by negative partisanship — the belief that the other side is so cosmically awful that party tribalism kicks in and they will show up and vote for just about anyone to stop, in the case of Democrats, Trump.

LaRosa, for instance, describes himself as a Biden supporter who has never supported a challenge to Biden or a third-party candidate. But since leaving the White House, he has at times been publicly critical of Democrats and the Biden operation, and noted their strategy “for the last year has been to deny data, undermine or ridicule anyone who questions them, and wage war against the free press.”

“Now, President Biden is left without any goodwill and his message is undercut,” LaRosa said. “You can’t say that Trump is a threat to democracy while you crucify reporters for asking questions, tell us not to believe poll after poll, and manipulate the primary process to crush your political opposition.”

“It’s all,” he added, “sort of Trumpian, to be honest.”

Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston (R) has rejected petitions to put an abortion access measure on the ballot this fall, blaming a procedural error by the organizing group.

Arkansans for Limited Government gathered more than 100,000 signatures in support of a ballot proposal to legalize abortion up to 18 weeks after fertilization, and exceptions afterward in cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal anomaly or threat of physical harm to the pregnant patient. The group has faced a significant challenge in promoting its constitutional amendment initiative in what is sometimes ranked the “most pro-life state in America.”

Thurston said the group failed to submit a document naming paid canvassers and a signed statement confirming that paid canvassers had been provided with required information about their role. He added that when signatures gathered by paid canvassers were removed, it reduced the number to 87,382, below the threshold for ballot inclusion of 90,704.

“Because you failed at this first step, it is my duty to reject your submission,” he said in a letter to the group.

Arkansans for Limited Government said in a statement after the that it had complied with requirements and that it will “fight this ridiculous disqualification attempt with everything we have.”

The group also said it had worked with the secretary of state’s office throughout the process, using affidavit paperwork supplied by the office to provide the state with a list of paid canvassers and the required information associated with their employment.

“Asserting now that we didn’t provide required documentation regarding paid canvassers is absurd and demonstrably, undeniably incorrect,” it said.

The group said it had emailed the required signed statement to the office “more than a dozen times.”

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

Antiabortion Republicans in Arkansas voiced approval of Thurston’s decision. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said liberal abortion rights advocates in Arkansas “showed they are both immoral and incompetent.”

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said in a social media post that “failure to follow such a basic requirement is inexcusable.” He added that the abortion rights advocates “have no one to blame but themselves.”

“As I have long said, changing the Arkansas Constitution involves a rigorous process, as it should, and it requires sponsors to adhere to all applicable laws and rules,” he said.

Abortion will be on the ballot in about a dozen states in November. When voters have been asked to vote on the issue since the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022, they have largely approved measures that sought to preserve or expand abortion access and rejected those that have sought to restrict it, even in more conservative states.

Hannah Knowles contributed to this report.

The Sioux City Explorers were in a bind. Three hours before the Iowa-based professional baseball team was set to take the field Saturday, manager Steve Montgomery received the news that his starting pitcher for the day was injured. The other arms on his roster were spent. Frantic, he sent a flurry of calls to local baseball players who might be able to serve as an emergency replacement.

Most of those calls went unanswered. Then J.D. Scholten, a 44-year-old Democratic representative in the Iowa House, picked up the phone.

“I said, ‘J.D., I’m desperate. I need you to start tonight’s game,’” Montgomery recalled.

“You’re kidding me,” Scholten replied.

It was a chance for a comeback that Scholten, a retired player who pitched in several independent professional leagues before entering politics, never imagined he’d see at this stage in his career. So the lawmaker raced home, grabbed his cleats, signed a contract at the ballpark and took the mound for his hometown team — where he threw 100 pitches over almost seven innings in a winning performance that brought the ballpark to its feet.

“It was pretty magical,” Scholten told The Washington Post.

Scholten’s heroics in the Explorers’ 11-2 win revived a baseball career that has stretched decades longer than the representative’s political one. Scholten grew up playing baseball in Sioux City and, when he wasn’t drafted after college, entered the network of independent professional leagues in the United States and elsewhere unassociated with the MLB or its minor league system. In the 2000s, he played four seasons for the Sioux City Explorers, who compete in the American Association of Professional Baseball with 11 other teams based mostly in the Midwest and Canada. Between stints in the United States, he joined teams in Canada, Cuba, Belgium and Germany.

Scholten’s dogged-ballplayer persona stayed with him after he retired and entered politics around six years ago. He ran ads with the tagline “If you build it, they will come” from the 1989 baseball movie “Field of Dreams” as he drew national attention with a competitive but unsuccessful bid to unseat Rep. Steve King (R) in a red congressional district in 2018. He ran for the U.S. House again in 2020 and lost before being elected to the Iowa House of Representatives in 2022, when he ran unopposed.

Scholten continued pitching in his spare time. When the legislative session ended in May 2023, he played in an amateur league and traveled overseas to briefly play for a professional team in the Netherlands. He couldn’t stay away from baseball.

“It’s partly because I want to stay in shape and all that,” Scholten said. “But it’s also a great stress relief and a great distraction from being in politics.”

Scholten, more sore after every outing in his 40s and in the midst of a reelection campaign, never imagined he’d return to his hometown team this year. He was volunteering at a music festival in Sioux City on Saturday when Montgomery, the Sioux City Explorers manager, called with his last-ditch request.

Montgomery knew that Scholten was in shape. The Explorers were reeling after two dismal losses to start the holiday weekend, when opposing batters had ripped home run after home run against their exhausted bullpen and left the pitching roster depleted. What did they have to lose?

“We were in a little desperate times,” Montgomery said.

With two hours before the game’s first pitch, Scholten began warming up. Word got around Sioux City quickly that a politician and a former hometown player was taking the mound. Scholten stepped out onto the Explorers’ field for the first time in almost two decades to a crowd bolstered by his old college teammates and family friends. Quietly, though, Montgomery and the Explorers’ staff tempered their expectations.

“I was just hoping for the best,” said Dan Vaughan, the Explorers’ broadcaster. “That he would get through the first couple of innings and give us a couple [of outs]. I mean, as much as I wanted … a more heroic story, I was just thinking, Milwaukee, this team we’re playing, is really good.”

The Milwaukee Milkmen started strong. In the first inning, the Explorers allowed a runner to score on a sacrifice fly and Scholten loaded the bases.

“I’m like, ‘Oh no,’” Vaughan said. “‘This could be a long evening.’”

But Scholten induced a double play to escape the jam. Then he cruised through Milwaukee’s lineup, striking out two batters and allowing only one run off a solo homer over the next five innings.

Scholten’s fastball touched 89 mph, Montgomery said. His sliders dipped and spun. He pitched with a veteran’s savvy, Montgomery added, inducing weak flyballs to quickly record outs and speed through his innings.

The Explorers built a comfortable lead behind Scholten’s pitching. Montgomery visited the mound after the lawmaker threw his 100th pitch in the seventh inning and — after some argument — convinced Scholten to exit the game to a raucous standing ovation. It felt like a playoff game, Montgomery said.

Even after playing baseball on several continents, it was also a first for Scholten.

“I never have gotten something like that in my life,” he said.

Scholten was named player of the game after the Explorers’ few remaining relief pitchers completed the win. His teammates doused him with a bucket of water in celebration — another first for him. In a postgame interview with Vaughan on the field, Scholten declared the win was for “all the middle-aged men who still think they can do it.”

Scholten and the Sioux City Explorers have since resumed their respective campaigns. The Explorers traveled north to Fargo, N.D., this week to begin a crucial road trip and vie for the final playoff spot in their division. Scholten said he has spent time distributing supplies for residents affected by recent flooding and door-knocking as a fundraising deadline approaches.

As Scholten campaigns, he is scheduled to pitch once more for the Explorers on Thursday in North Dakota. Scholten said that he believes he can balance his political commitments with baseball — and that he doesn’t mind if he never sheds the image of a ballplayer.

“At the end of the day,” Scholten said, “if people can think ‘baseball’ with me … I think that’s how I prefer to be remembered.”

The 31 NATO leaders who descended on Washington this week came expecting to talk about defending Ukraine, preventing cyberattacks and ensuring the future of the 75-year alliance. And while those discussions did take place Wednesday, an entirely different question was also a big topic of conversation among the heads of state: What is going to happen to President Biden?

The long-planned summit is overlapping with a moment of extraordinary political peril for Biden, as Democrats debate whether he should remain their presidential nominee since a shaky debate performance on June 27 prompted questions about his age, ability to campaign against Republican Donald Trump and capacity to serve another four-year term.

On Wednesday, the second of the summit’s three days, the leaders debated those questions among themselves, anxiously asking their American counterparts what to make of the unfolding political crisis and closely parsing Biden’s public and private interactions to determine whether he seems up to another brutal campaign and presidential term, according to several people familiar with leaders’ reactions, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private dynamics.

Since arriving in Washington on Tuesday and having their opening conversations with Biden, NATO’s leaders have been comparing notes on their impressions of the president, one European official familiar with the interactions said, in an effort to build as complete a portrait as possible of the most important alliance leader.

Two people who have spoken with the NATO leaders and dignitaries said most of them have four key questions, ones that largely track what many Americans are asking: Is Biden going to drop out? If he does, will Vice President Harris replace him at the top of the ticket? What does Harris mean for NATO? And what should they do to prepare for a possible Trump presidency?

The former president has threatened to shred the alliance and said he would allow Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO country that doesn’t spend enough on defense. But despite the underlying fears of Trump’s return, which many of the leaders dread, the mood of the NATO summit has been upbeat in many ways, said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm.

Leaders are encouraged by the fact that Ukraine is in a better position in its two-year-plus war with Russia than it was three months ago, even if deep concerns remain about its long-term prospects. And Biden welcomed two new countries, Finland and Sweden, into NATO, and touted the fact that the number of allies spending at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense has increased from nine in 2020 to 23 now.

Still, “there’s no question that what’s happening today with Biden — and with questions about American democracy and commitment to the transatlantic alliance — is making everyone very nervous,” Bremmer said.

White House officials, mindful that divisions over Ukraine broke into the open at last year’s NATO summit in Lithuania, have spent the past 12 months trying to manage Kyiv’s expectations about its prospects for membership in the alliance. They have emphasized that this year’s gathering would be largely an opportunity to celebrate 75 years of NATO, potentially delivering a foreign policy boost to Biden ahead of the election.

But Biden’s debate performance two weeks ago transformed the energy at the gathering, sucking the air out of the festivities and focusing attention on the president’s ability to do his job, according to several participants.

Any NATO summit features an intense focus on the U.S. president. He typically speaks first in the leaders’ closed-door meetings, a recognition of the key role Washington plays in propping up the alliance. This year, the United States is set to spend $968 billion on defense, according to NATO figures — nearly double the total expenditure of the other 31 member nations.

But with Biden’s abilities in question, that casual attention has transformed into detailed, anxious analysis of his every gesture and utterance. Some leaders have been undertaking an effort to bolster NATO against the possibility that Trump would return and undermine it from within. Even under Biden, some strong supporters of Kyiv complain that the alliance has not been aggressive enough about supporting Ukraine and moving it more quickly toward NATO membership.

Biden’s most important test will come Thursday, when he is set to hold a rare news conference that Democrats say will be critical to showing that he has the energy and mental agility to campaign against Trump. European leaders will closely watch that news conference to try to determine whether his debate performance was a bad night, as Biden has argued, or a sign of a bigger problem that could make it more challenging to defeat Trump.

As early as Tuesday, leaders began exchanging notes on their interactions with Biden and how much he appears to have aged. One person familiar with some of the conversations said leaders felt that Biden was showing no improvement over his appearance at the Group of Seven summit in Italy last month, when European officials came away alarmed at how much more frail he seemed.

Several European leaders have known Biden for many years — some dating back to his days as vice president more than 10 years ago — and that has made his recent aging especially stark, the person familiar with the conversations said.

Discussions of Biden’s condition and political future have dominated the chatter on the sidelines of the summit. At a reception at the British ambassador’s grand residence Tuesday, American officials maintained studious poker faces when the topic of Biden’s future came up. European ministers and security officials, meanwhile, pumped American acquaintances for insider details about the thinking at the White House, the mechanics of nominating a different Democratic candidate and potential replacements, according to people familiar with the conversations, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

At a Tuesday reception with all 32 NATO leaders, Biden’s mannerisms were similar to those in a welcome speech he had delivered earlier that evening, as he recognized many of his counterparts without prompting and engaged in fluid if brief encounters, one European official said. The president mingled with other leaders alone, without his or their aides present, the official said.

Still, foreign leaders, like many American observers, are now viewing some of Biden’s behaviors, which earlier they might have dismissed as inconsequential, through a new lens.

During Biden’s opening speech Tuesday, many in the audience were watching closely as the president put the presidential medal of freedom around the neck of outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, according to three people who were present. One person said some in the audience held their breath, anxious to see if Biden could complete the task. The ceremony went off without a hitch.

Biden then spoke passionately about the renewed strength of the alliance, which has largely remained unified in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Biden did not mention Trump by name, but he stressed that a majority of Americans support NATO and spoke of the danger of a world without the alliance.

“It’s good that we’re stronger than ever, because this moment in history calls for our collective strength,” Biden said in his speech. “The American people understand what would happen if there was no NATO — another war in Europe, American troops fighting and dying, dictators spreading chaos.”

At the summit’s main meeting Wednesday, Biden delivered prepared remarks of about three minutes without difficulty, then appeared attentive throughout the hours of interventions by the other 31 leaders, four senior officials who took part said.

After the meeting, Biden hosted Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, at the White House.

Early in the day, Biden stopped by a meeting of AFL-CIO leaders, a friendly group that has reaffirmed its support for the president. “I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s chances,” Biden told the labor group. “Not because of me, but because of what we’re doing together.”

Democratic leaders called on President Biden and his campaign Wednesday to provide convincing evidence of a viable path to victory amid a steady tide of bad battleground state polling and growing concerns that he cannot defeat former president Donald Trump in November.

The calls came as top union leaders expressed grave concerns about his candidacy, more members of Congress and other Democrats called on him to step aside, and even members of Biden’s senior campaign staff began to exchange doubt about his prospects.

In a closed-door meeting Wednesday, some of the country’s union leaders — many of whom are strident backers of Biden — said Americans’ doubts about Biden’s ability to do the job were damaging his candidacy and repeatedly asked Biden campaign officials for their plan to defeat Trump, according to two people familiar with their comments, who like others for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private comments. Two of the most outspoken leaders were Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, and Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers, two of Biden’s biggest labor allies.

In a statement later Wednesday, AFL-CIO leadership “unanimously voted to reaffirm its commitment” to Biden, saying, “No president has been more invested in helping workers than Joe Biden.”

Senior campaign staff have started to take a more pessimistic view of Biden’s chances, even as they continue to fan out in a full-court blitz to push the campaign forward and reassure allies of the president’s potential to rebound.

“Overwhelmingly a majority of senior campaign staff are despondent and don’t see a path,” said a Democratic strategist familiar with the conversations, who like many others for this story requested anonymity to speak frankly about internal deliberations. A second person familiar with the discussions did not dispute the description.

“We can either worry or we can work, and this team is doing the work that wins elections,” Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Democrats say the defections are likely to increase in coming days, with lawmakers and donors privately signaling that, by the end of the week, they may publicly call for Biden to drop out. They argue they do not want to embarrass Biden during the ongoing NATO summit in Washington while also giving him time to come to that conclusion on his own.

On Wednesday, Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont became the first Democratic senator to call on Biden to drop out, writing in a Washington Post op-ed that he should do so “for the good of the country” because of the danger posed by Trump. In addition, Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), one of the party’s most vulnerable members, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Antonio Delgado, the lieutenant governor of New York who formerly represented a swing district in Congress, also called on Biden to step aside.

At the first presidential debate with Trump on June 27, Biden was unable to complete sentences, often spoke haltingly and, at times, seemed confused about what question he was trying to answer. Democrats panicked over the performance, raising questions about his ability to serve another four years as president and renewing questions about the 81-year-old’s mental acuity.

Biden and his campaign continue to publicly maintain that he will not leave the race and that he is positioned to beat Trump in an election that will take place in 117 days. The Biden campaign told Democratic senators Wednesday that campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, senior campaign adviser Mike Donilon and White House adviser Steve Ricchetti would meet Thursday for a briefing on the path forward. The Biden campaign said it conducted polling immediately after the debate that found no significant movement in the battleground states for Biden.

A Democratic senator, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid view, said that, if the campaign team tells senators that there has been little to no deterioration in the president’s position, “I don’t think anybody will believe it.” He added that senators will be looking for “convincing evidence that they can turn this thing around.”

Kate Bedingfield, the deputy campaign manager on Biden’s 2020 campaign and former White House communications director, gave voice to private frustrations in the party that the campaign has not yet offered an empirical case for Biden recovering from his debate setback and then gaining enough momentum to win.

“If they have data that supports the path to victory that they see, they should put it out there now and help people who badly want to beat Trump rally around it,” Bedingfield wrote on social media. “People want to see the path.”

Ron Klain, a longtime Biden adviser and former White House chief of staff, said there was unanimity among Biden’s team that he remains the best candidate to defeat Trump. “He wins in 2024 as he did in 2020 — because his personal values and character ultimately prevail against Trump,” Klain wrote in a text message.

Democrats have been privately sketching out possible scenarios and the timing of them, should Biden decide to leave the race, including Biden possibly endorsing the nomination of Vice President Harris. One Democratic strategist said time is of the essence: “Every iteration of this, earlier is better,” avoiding a “mad scramble” near or at the Democratic National Convention in August in Chicago.

Biden announced in a letter to Democratic allies Monday that he was “firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump.” But former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) appeared Wednesday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe — a show that Biden is known to watch regularly — where she described Biden’s continued candidacy as an open question.

“It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run,” said Pelosi, who remains a member of the House since relinquishing her speakership. “We’re all encouraging him to make that decision. Because time is running short.”

House Democratic concerns are anchored in polling from before the debate that showed Biden already trailing Trump in districts that he won comfortably in 2020, with approval ratings in the low 4os, according to a person who has seen the data. In both House and Senate polls, down-ballot Democrats continue to outperform Biden in ballot tests.

An AARP poll released Tuesday — which was conducted by polling firms that work for the Biden and Trump campaigns — showed Biden trailing Trump in Wisconsin by six points in a five-way contest that included third-party candidates. Biden beat Trump in Wisconsin by less than a percentage point in 2020. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) maintained a lead of three points over her Republican opponent, the businessman Eric Hovde, in the AARP poll.

“He is just a drag everywhere,” said another Democrat working on campaigns this cycle who has seen private polling across the country.

The campaign has since started another round of polling this week, though the results have not come back, said people familiar with the operation. Biden also announced he would sit down for a 9 p.m. interview Monday with NBC News anchor Lester Holt in Austin during the first night of the Republican nominating convention.

National public polls showed Trump with a slight lead before the debate — a sharp contrast to the lead of about four points Biden enjoyed over Trump at the same point in the 2020 campaign. Since the debate, national polls have showed a 2½-point average shift in Trump’s direction, according to a Washington Post average of polling.

Democrats are particularly concerned about Biden’s diminished status compared to the 2020 campaign. At this point in that cycle, he polled 9 points ahead of Trump in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. Biden won the national popular vote by 4½ points that November. Trump now leads the same average by more than 3 points.

Some Democrats have grown concerned in recent days about the pace of fundraising for Biden and the independent groups supporting his campaign, as high-dollar bundlers for the president have shown reluctance to work their networks or have refused to follow through with donations. The campaign was bringing in more than $3 million a day after the debate, according to people familiar with the internal numbers. Donations have since dropped off and campaign advisers are awaiting the Republican convention next week to see if enthusiasm returns.

The uncertainty among high-dollar donors about giving to independent groups has made it “hard to balance the checkbook,” said one fundraiser involved in the effort. “I think a lot of the large-dollar donors are going to move their funding to the House and the Senate. If Biden is going to stay in, he has got to pray that the small-dollar donors come through.”

On Wednesday, George Clooney, the Academy Award-winning actor and longtime Democratic donor, said Biden should drop out of the presidential race. Clooney — who co-hosted a fundraiser for Biden last month in Los Angeles — said the president “wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020” at that event.

“This isn’t only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and Congress member and governor that I’ve spoken with in private,” Clooney wrote in the New York Times. “Every single one, irrespective of what he or she is saying publicly.”

He continued: “The dam has broken. We can put our heads in the sand and pray for a miracle in November, or we can speak the truth.”

Lauren Kaori Gurley and Liz Goodwin contributed reporting.

Sen. Peter Welch (Vt.) has become the first Democratic senator to call for President Biden to step aside following his June debate.

“We cannot unsee President Biden’s disastrous debate performance,” the freshman senator wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published Wednesday evening. “We cannot ignore or dismiss the valid questions raised since that night.

“For the good of the country, I’m calling on President Biden to withdraw from the race,” Welch said.

The senator cited polling “shifts” in Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia to make the case that the political peril was too great for Biden to stay in the race because of the risk that Donald Trump might win.

Democratic lawmakers continue to question Biden’s viability as a candidate and panic over their party’s prospects in the fall. Twelve members of the House have called on Biden to step aside. Several senators privately expressed concerns in a closed-door meeting Tuesday that Biden has no path to victory in 2024 and that his unpopularity risks Democrats losing both the House and Senate. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said in a CNN interview Tuesday night that he feared Trump would win in a “landslide” but stopped short of asking Biden to step aside.

Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), in a TV interview on Wednesday, also urged Biden to quickly decide whether he is running, despite Biden insisting he is staying in the race.

“We’re all encouraging him to make that decision, because time is running short,” Pelosi said.

On Thursday, top Biden officials Mike Donilon, Jen O’Malley Dillon, and Steve Ricchetti will brief Senate Democrats at lunch at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) invited them to address his caucus’s concerns.

“As I have made clear repeatedly publicly and privately, I support President Biden and remain committed to ensuring Donald Trump is defeated in November,” Schumer said in a statement Wednesday evening.

The position puts Welch at odds with his fellow Vermonter, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who told reporters Wednesday that he believed Biden could win and has urged people to focus on Biden’s policies.

Earlier on Wednesday, Welch said he hoped Biden would decide to exit the race after he saw the polling data. “President Biden has made it clear that he’s all in, but the evidence continues to come in about how an uphill battle is turning into an up-mountain battle,” the senator said.

Biden has told Hill Democrats that he is running and wants the debate about his candidacy to end.

“I am firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump,” he wrote them in a letter sent Monday.

On Wednesday, Cook Political Report analyst David Wasserman described Trump’s lead in the polls post-debate as “the most drastic shift in the race all year.”

In his op-ed, Welch praised Biden for his years of service, saying that he has “united” the party and helped created a bench of elected officials who can defeat Trump. He called Vice President Harris a “capable” leader and also praised other unnamed Democratic governors and senators.

“I understand why President Biden wants to run,” he wrote. “He saved us from Donald Trump once and wants to do it again. But he needs to reassess whether he is the best candidate to do so. In my view, he is not.”