BIDEN DROPS OUT
US President Joe Biden has announced he will not seek reelection after weeks-long pressure from fellow Democrats to step aside.
In a post on X, the 81-year-old said: “It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. 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 on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term.”
In a follow-up post, Biden said he was backing his Vice President Kamala Harris to be the party’s nominee in November’s election, declaring: “My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my vice president. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”
Biden’s decision to drop out of the race comes after relentless pressure from within his own party, sparked by his disastrous performance in the presidential debate in June against Republican Donald Trump and subsequent falling in the polls.
Following the announcement, Democrats flooded social media with statements praising Biden for his decision and putting “his country, his party, and our future first”.
With only 106 days left until the US election, The New York Times reports on the scramble the party now faces in terms of how it nominates its presidential candidate just one month out from its national convention. The paper also reports Biden’s senior staff were only informed he was ending his campaign one minute before the statement went live.
A senior Democrat said many would now also endorse Harris to be the party’s nominee, CNN reports. The official said the party could “use this moment to bring the party together and return the contrast to Donald Trump”.
Bill and Hillary Clinton said in a statement praising Biden they too were endorsing Harris and would “do whatever we can to support her”.
Barack Obama did not endorse a candidate in his statement, instead choosing to focus on praising Biden, his former VP: “I also know Joe has never backed down from a fight. For him to look at the political landscape and decide that he should pass the torch to a new nominee is surely one of the toughest in his life. But I know he wouldn’t make this decision unless he believed it was right for America.”
The Washington Post reports Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social following Sunday’s announcement that Biden “was not fit to run for president, and is certainly not fit to serve — And never was!”
Republican Mike Johnson, the House speaker, called on Biden to resign as president with immediate effect.
In a post on X, he said: “At this unprecedented juncture in American history, we must be clear about what just happened. The Democrat Party forced the Democrat nominee off the ballot, just over 100 days before the election. Having invalidated the votes of more than 14 million Americans who selected Joe Biden to be the Democrat nominee for president, the self-proclaimed ‘party of democracy’ has proven exactly the opposite.”
He added: “If Joe Biden is not fit to run for president, he is not fit to serve as president. He must resign the office immediately. November 5 cannot arrive soon enough.”
Biden, who has been isolating due to COVID, said he would address the country later this week to discuss his decision further. His presidential term is set to end in January 2025.
FATHER HAILED A HERO
A father who died trying to save his twin toddlers after their pram rolled onto the track at Sydney’s Carlton station on Sunday has been hailed a hero.
Police said the 40-year-old jumped down to try and save his two-year-old daughters after the pram fell into the path of an oncoming train, Guardian Australia reports.
Having arrived within minutes of the emergency call, police were able to save one of the girls after hearing crying under the train. However, her sister and father died at the scene.
“As they’ve gotten out of the lift, they’ve taken their hands off the handle for a very, very short time, and whether it’s a gust of wind… it appears the pram has instantly started to roll in the direction of the train lines,” The Sydney Morning Herald quotes Superintendent Paul Dunstan as saying.
NSW Premier Chris Minns called the father’s act of jumping onto the tracks to try and rescue his children “incredibly brave and heroic”.
“He’s just gone into parent mode and tried to save his two young daughters and in doing so, it’s cost him his life,” Minns said.
The surviving toddler and her 39-year-old mother were taken to St George Hospital in a stable condition, the ABC reports.
In Australian politics, the latest Newspoll survey for The Australian shows Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton both struggling to attract voters to back them as preferred leaders of their respective parties, the AAP reports.
Just 28% of voters nominated Albanese and Dutton as the preferred party leaders, ahead of five other chosen candidates.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
There’s nothing worse than your luggage going missing on holiday. But imagine how you’d feel if you were competing in the Olympic Games and your bags went AWOL.
That’s exactly what’s just happened to the Matildas, Fox Sports reports.
Australia’s women’s soccer team traveled from their training base in Spain to Marseilles in France by private jet on Friday but some of their kit did not arrive with them. On Sunday their luggage was still missing.
The Matildas are due to play Germany in their opening game of the Paris Olympics on Thursday (local time).
The Sydney Morning Herald quotes the Australian team’s chef de mission Anna Meares as saying: “This luggage was meant to be on several flights yesterday, but it did not happen. It’s not ideal.
“It’s a cargo issue with the international travel and there are potential risks being on a commercial flight or a private flight. It was a decision by Football Australia to take a chartered flight to try and avoid those issues.”
The missing items include “personal luggage, medical items and other important equipment”, the paper reports.
The Matildas are the only Australian Olympic team to travel on a charter flight. Responding to the decision by Football Australia to fly private, International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams said: “I think it comes down to a personal choice. Our position is having the most sustainable games possible.
“Of course, we would encourage the lowest emission kind of transport possible for everyone else, us included. From Lausanne, we all came on trains.”
Say What?
In some instances where specific Secret Service specialised units or resources were not provided, the agency made modifications to ensure the security of the protectee.
Anthony Guglielmi
Guglielmi, a Secret Service spokesman, released a statement at the weekend responding to reports in The Washington Post and The New York Times claiming the Secret Service had repeatedly rejected requests from Donald Trump’s security team for more resources and staffing over the last two years.
CRIKEY RECAP
Grove’s career to date has been varied — an ASIC search revealed Grove is currently director of 23 registered companies, from media startups to “Australia’s first circular economy innovation accelerator” Boomerang Labs, which he co-founded with Anna Minns, wife of NSW Premier Chris Minns.
But Crikey has looked into Grove’s nearly two-decades-long career in media, unearthing new legal documents and speaking to dozens of former colleagues and associates to paint a picture of a figure who charms up-and-comers with his “infectious” enthusiasm, splashes of cash, and promises to make a successful business out of their talents, but soon leaves on less glowing terms.
In a statement Grove provided to Crikey in lieu of answering more than 50 questions put to him, he acknowledged his “areas for improvement are tempering my optimism, financial management and blue-sky thinking”.
“This time, the far-right threat is real,” Politico warned. “A far-right takeover of Europe is underway,” Foreign Policy declared. Even former UK prime minister Gordon Brown entered the fray with the ominous: “There’s a hard-right tidal wave about to hit Europe.”
Setting the tone, the European Council of Foreign Relations revealed in January that far-right parties would be increasingly dominant in national settings and the European Parliament.
Yet the dust is settling after a series of elections and, while making significant gains, the far right did not take over multiple countries the way the zeitgeist predicted.
Viktor Orbán is cementing his role as a key influencer of the global conservative movement and a key go-between with Putin’s Russia. Giorgia Meloni may be somewhat unpopular domestically in Italy, but she is increasingly powerful within European institutions. And this is all before a likely second Trump term.
The next major test will be the German election due next year, where Olaf Scholz’s centre-left coalition government is set for a shellacking. If the far-right Alternative for Germany party disproportionately gains, it could test the Christian Democratic Union’s resolve to refuse a coalition with them. The far right returning to German government for the first time since WWII is a truly bleak proposition.
Any setbacks for the far right must be savoured. But these were more bruises than knockout blows.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
‘They tried to make us Russians’: The children Putin stole (The Sunday Times) ($)
Bangladesh top court scales back job quotas that sparked violent unrest (The Financial Times)
Israel intercepts missile from Yemen after airstrikes on Houthi port (The Washington Post)
Couple found dead after trying to cross Atlantic (BBC)
Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle to testify on failures leading up to assassination attempt on Trump (New York Post)
US Olympic Committee sues Prime, Logan Paul’s energy drink brand, alleging trademark infringement (CBS News)
THE COMMENTARIAT
What Joe Biden just did is utterly extraordinary — Frank Bruni (The New York Times): In the hours and days to come, many political observers will say that President Biden was backed into a corner and had no choice but to end his reelection campaign. His limitations had been laid painfully bare. He’d lost the confidence of the Democratic Party. And he was staggering toward an increasingly ugly revolt within it or a potentially harrowing defeat by Donald Trump. Bowing out wasn’t an act of grace. It was a saving of face.
All correct. But that’s not the whole truth. Not the full story. It misses the bigness of what Biden just did — its historical rarity, its emotional agony, its fundamental humility.
Dramatic deeds are remembered, but too many feminists of the past are forgotten — Susanna Rustin (The Guardian): It isn’t that all feminism’s forebears have been forgotten. But those who are remembered tend to be celebrated for their most singular and charismatic deeds. Suffragettes pouring acid on golf courses and women’s libbers flour-bombing the 1970 Miss World contest have both recently featured in films. I love these stories. But they are not instruction manuals. And from the perspective of now, with a huge problem of violence against women, an ongoing crisis around care — widely recognised to disproportionately affect women, as carers and as the majority of dementia sufferers — and deep concern about maternity services among pressing current issues, it is important to think carefully about how change happens.
Harriet Wistrich’s new book Sister in Law contains no hunger strikes or bra fires. But it shows how feminist lawyers worked with activist groups including Southall Black Sisters to carry on work begun by the Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1970s.
