News
Four days since his disastrous debate, Biden hasn’t called top Democrats in Congress
WASHINGTON — Four days after his disastrous debate performance, President Joe Biden still hadn’t personally called top Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill to shore up support, five sources told NBC News, though White House chief of staff Jeff Zients was making calls.
Biden’s team has been working to quash questions swirling in the party about whether he can continue in the race against former President Donald Trump. Yet there’s growing frustration at the president’s inner circle for being overly “insulated,” said a Democratic lawmaker, who added that Biden isn’t doing the type of personal outreach they’d expect.
Biden hasn’t personally reached out to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both New York Democrats, or to other Hill leaders after his halting debate — a decision that has stunned some lawmakers.
“It’s troubling,” a House Democrat said, adding that the White House staff should be transparent — at least in private calls with lawmakers — about whether Biden’s struggles on the debate stage were a one-off or whether they have seen the problem before.
Schumer and Jeffries haven’t publicly expressed any disappointment at the outreach. Schumer’s office had no comment, while Jeffries’ office didn’t respond to questions.
The Biden campaign didn’t comment specifically on Schumer and Jeffries but said Biden had talked with some elected officials.
“The president has spoken personally with multiple elected officials on the Hill and across the battlegrounds since the debate,” campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said.
Top White House officials have been in touch. Zients called Schumer and Jeffries after the debate, three sources said, and he has continued to trade calls with Schumer to discuss “staying aligned on next steps,” one of those sources said. Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president, also was making calls to the Hill.
While Democratic lawmakers are all standing by Biden publicly, at least four told NBC News that they privately believe he needs to drop out now — four months before Election Day — to avoid a lopsided defeat for Democrats.
“It’s a very tough call. But because he will continue to decline, and because if he continues as our nominee we risk some catastrophic event after the convention that prohibits him from continuing as the nominee, he should step aside and allow for a nominating process at the convention in August,” said a Democratic lawmaker, who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak candidly.
Asked whether Biden should gracefully bow out now, a moderate House Democrat replied, “yes,” adding that they still would like to see whether Biden’s approval drops precipitously in new polling after the debate.
Another Democratic lawmaker said colleagues will decide what to publicly say about Biden once they see the impact of the debate on House swing district polls. Democrats need to flip just a handful of seats to flip the House to Democratic control, while they face a tough map to hold on to the Senate.
“That has to be the firewall” against a potential Trump presidency, the lawmaker said.
Another House Democrat, this one a vulnerable moderate facing a tough re-election this fall, said they were still processing what happened last week and not yet calling on Biden to drop out of the race. But this lawmaker expressed anger and pointed the finger at the people around Biden 81, for letting him step on the debate stage.
“I hold his family and his advisers directly responsible for this mess,” the vulnerable lawmaker said in an interview. “They are closest to him, and they should have pulled him out before this happened.”
The person added: “Just hoping someone above my pay grade figures this out.”
Rep. Annie Kuster, D-N.H., the chairwoman of the moderate New Democrat Coalition, also reiterated frustration with the Biden team’s handling of the debate and said Democrats need more information to assess “what happened” as they defend their seats.
“Obviously, we saw what we saw. We saw what 50 million Americans saw, and we have concern for the president’s well-being. We were disappointed and worried for him. … Many of us have been upset with his team of advisers that he was put in that situation,” Kuster said in an interview Monday.
“And I think we need to get a clear understanding of what happened, both in the debate preparation and during the debate. He’s obviously been much more energetic since then at the rallies,” Kuster said. “We all have a lot of concern for him. I hope he’s fine. And so the first stage is to assess what the impact is in these tough races.”
The Biden campaign, his political allies and top Democratic Hill leaders have chalked up Biden’s debate performance to a “bad night” and said he should be judged on his long list of legislative accomplishments and the fact that the alternative, Trump, is dangerous to the country. An energetic Biden acknowledged at a campaign rally Friday, “I don’t debate as well as I used to,” but he said he still plans to win in November.
Many Biden allies and family members have spent the past several days circling the wagons, and some campaign aides and donors have argued that trying to nominate a replacement so late in the game could create an even worse scenario for the party.
“This magical thinking about the delegate selection process is people using mushrooms,” said Orin Kramer, a Biden fundraiser and a veteran of Jimmy Carter’s White House. “They have to get rid of the drugs and focus on the future of civilization. He’s been a great president.”
In an appearance on MSNBC over the weekend, Jeffries called Biden’s debate showing an “underwhelming performance” and said House Democrats would be having conversations by phone and virtually during the July Fourth recess about the path forward. But he said he was standing by Biden, whom he described as a “good man, an honorable man,” running against a “con man.”
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a member of the Biden campaign’s national advisory board, told NBC News on Monday, “I support the president’s decision to stay and fight — the American people respect those with resilience and grit.”
But a Democratic lawmaker who has been in touch with members who face competitive races this fall described them as “scared.”
“The ones that are in the worst position are front-liners in the swing states who already were feeling as though they had to carry the president … and then the catch-22 of trying to go out there and campaign. … It’s hard not to be panicky,” the lawmaker said. “It’s a lot of pressure. It’s a lot of anxiety.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a Biden ally who led the team of impeachment prosecutors after Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 attack, acknowledged Sunday that “honest and serious conversations are taking place” in the Democratic Party about Biden’s political future.
Two Democratic officials in Washington said the way for Biden to recover would be to get out more in unscripted settings to prove the debate was simply an off night — getting on TV, doing interviews or town halls, holding news conferences.
That’s the “only way to fix it,” one of the Democrats said. “Got to get him out there.” The other said Monday it’s “damning” that four days after the debate, Biden still hasn’t held an event where he speaks without a teleprompter.
One observer of the current Senate race in Louisiana noted that Sen. Bill Cassidy could lose his reelection bid.
Annie Flanagan for NPR
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Annie Flanagan for NPR
Sen. Bill Cassidy lost Saturday’s Louisiana Republican primary according to a race call by the Associated Press.
Cassidy, who served two terms in the Senate, was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict President Trump after the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. That vote put him at odds with Trump and his MAGA coalition, ultimately leading Trump to push Rep. Julia Letlow to run against Cassidy.
Cassidy’s bid for a third term was viewed as a test of Trump’s grip on the party–and of what voters want from their representatives in Washington. The primary pitted Cassidy, a veteran lawmaker, former physician and chair of the powerful Senate health committee, against Letlow, a political newcomer and a millennial MAGA loyalist.
A detailed view of a hat that reads, Run Julia Run, is seen at a campaign event for Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) on May 6, 2026 in Franklinton, Louisiana.
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A former college administrator, Letlow won a special election in 2021 for the House seat her late husband, Luke, was set to assume before he died from COVID in 2020.
In Congress, Letlow sponsored a bill to collect oral histories from the pandemic and has focused on education and children. She introduced the “Parents Bill of Rights Act,” which would allow parents to review classroom materials like library books and require schools to notify parents if their child requests different pronouns, locker rooms or sports teams.
She also serves on the powerful appropriations committee and has embraced Trump’s agenda.
Letlow, who came first in Saturday’s primary, will face Louisiana state Treasurer John Fleming in the runoff on June 27. Cassidy came in third.
The election result is a victory for President Trump who has put Republican loyalty to the test on the ballot so far this year in Indiana state senate primaries and in Cassidy’s race.
Another major test of Trump’s influence comes in Kentucky’s primary on Tuesday when Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who has found himself at odds with the president, faces a challenger endorsed by Trump.
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Brass bands in Beijing make way for sticker shock at home as Trump returns to escalating inflation
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump returned from the spectacle of a Chinese state visit to a less than welcoming U.S. economy — with the military band and garden tour in Beijing giving way to pressure over how to fix America’s escalating inflation rate.
Consumer inflation in the United States increased to 3.8% annually in April, higher than what he inherited as the Iran war and the Republican president’s own tariffs have pushed up prices. Inflation is now outpacing wage gains and effectively making workers poorer. The Cleveland Federal Reserve estimates that annual inflation could reach 4.2% in May as the war has kept oil and gasoline prices high.
Trump’s time with Chinese leader Xi Jinping appears unlikely to help the U.S. economy much, despite Trump’s claims of coming trade deals. The trip occurred as many people are voting in primaries leading into the November general election while having to absorb the rising costs of gasoline, groceries, utility bills, jewelry, women’s clothing, airplane tickets and delivery services. Democrats see the moment as a political opportunity.
“He’s returning to a dumpster fire,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal think tank focused on economic issues. “The president will not have the faith and confidence of the American people — the economy is their top issue and the president is saying, ‘You’re on your own.’”
The president’s trip to Beijing and his recent comments that indicated a tone-deafness to voters’ concerns about rising prices have suggested his focus is not on the American public and have undermined Republicans who had intended to campaign on last year’s tax cuts as helping families.
Trump described the trip as a victory, saying on social media that Xi “congratulated me on so many tremendous successes,” as the U.S. president has praised their relationship.
Trump told reporters that Boeing would be selling 200 aircraft — and maybe even 750 “if they do a good job” — to the Chinese. He said American farmers would be “very happy” because China would be “buying billions of dollars of soybeans.”
“We had an amazing time,” Trump said as he flew home on Air Force One, and told Fox News’ Bret Baier in an interview that gasoline prices were just some “short-term pain” and would “drop like a rock” once the war ends.
Inflationary pain is not a factor in how Trump handles Iran
Trump departed from the White House for China by saying the negotiations over the Iran war depended on stopping Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.
That remark prompted blowback because it suggested to some that Trump cared more about challenging Iran than fighting inflation at home. Trump defended his words, telling Fox News: “That’s a perfect statement. I’d make it again.”
The White House has since stressed that Trump is focused on inflation.
Asked later about the president’s words, Vice President JD Vance said there had been a “misrepresentation” of the remarks. White House spokesman Kush Desai said the “administration remains laser-focused on delivering growth and affordability on the homefront” while indicating actions would be taken on grocery prices.
But as Trump appeared alongside Xi, new reports back home showed inflation rising for businesses and interest rates climbing on U.S. government debt.
His comments that Boeing would sell 200 jets to China caused the company’s stock price to fall because investors had expected a larger number. There was little concrete information offered about any trade agreements reached during the summit, including Chinese purchases of U.S. exports such as liquefied natural gas and beef.
“Foreign policy wins can matter politically, but only if voters feel stability and affordability in their daily lives,” said Brittany Martinez, a former Republican congressional aide who is the executive director of Principles First, a center-right advocacy group focused on democracy issues.
“Midterms are almost always a referendum on cost of living and public frustration, and Republicans are not immune from the same inflation and affordability pressures that hurt Democrats in recent cycles,” she added.
Democrats see Trump as vulnerable
Democratic lawmakers are seizing on Trump’s comments before his trip as proof of his indifference to lowering costs. There is potential staying power of his remarks as Americans head into Memorial Day weekend facing rising prices for the hamburgers and hot dogs to be grilled.
“What Americans do not see is any sympathy, any support, or any plan from Trump and congressional Republicans to lower costs – in fact, they see the opposite,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Thursday.
Vance faulted the Biden administration for the inflation problem even though the inflation rate is now higher than it was when Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 with a specific mandate to fix it.
“The inflation number last month was not great,” Vance said Wednesday, but he then stressed, “We’re not seeing anything like what we saw under the Biden administration.”
Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 under Biden, a Democrat. By the time Trump took the oath of office, it was a far more modest 3%.
Trump’s inflation challenge could get harder
The data tells a different story as higher inflation is spreading into the cost of servicing the national debt.
Over the past week, the interest rate charged on 10-year U.S. government debt jumped from 4.36% to 4.6%, an increase that implies higher costs for auto loans and mortgages.
“My fear is that the layers of supply shocks that are affecting the U.S. economy will only further feed into inflationary pressures,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon.
Daco noted that last year’s tariff increases were now translating into higher clothing prices. With the Supreme Court ruling against Trump’s ability to impose tariffs by declaring an economic emergency, his administration is preparing a new set of import taxes for this summer.
Daco stressed that there have been a series of supply shocks. First, tariffs cut into the supply of imports. In addition, Trump’s immigration crackdown cut into the supply of foreign-born workers. Now, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has cut off the vital waterway used to ship 20% of global oil supplies.
“We’re seeing an erosion of growth,” Daco said.
Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator, said she was fired from the agency Friday after she declined to resign.
She said she did not know who had ordered her firing or why, nor whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. knew of her fate. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The departure reflected the upheaval at the F.D.A., days after the resignation of Dr. Marty Makary, the agency commissioner. Dr. Makary had become a lightning rod for critics of the agency’s decisions to reject applications for rare disease drugs and to delay a report meant to supply damaging evidence about the abortion drug mifepristone. He also spent months before his departure pushing back on the White House’s requests for him to approve more flavored vapes, the reason he ultimately cited for leaving.
Dr. Hoeg’s hiring had startled public health leaders who were familiar with her track record as a vaccine skeptic, and she played a leading role in some of the agency’s most divisive efforts during her tenure. She worked on a report that purportedly linked the deaths of children and young adults to Covid vaccines, a dossier the agency has not released publicly. She was also the co-author of a document describing Mr. Kennedy’s decision to pare the recommendations for 17 childhood vaccines down to 11.
But in an interview on Friday, Dr. Hoeg said she “stuck with the science.”
“I am incredibly proud of the work we were doing,” Dr. Hoeg said, adding, “I’m glad that we didn’t give in to any pressures to approve drugs when it wasn’t appropriate.”
As the director of the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, she was a political appointee in a role that had been previously occupied by career officials. An epidemiologist who was trained in the United States and Denmark, she worked on efforts to analyze drug safety and on a panel to discuss the use of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, during pregnancy. She also worked on efforts to reduce animal testing and was the agency’s liaison to an influential vaccine committee.
She made sure that her teams approved drugs only when the risk-benefit balance was favorable, she said.
The firing worsens the leadership vacuum at the F.D.A. and other agencies, with temporary leaders filling the role of commissioner, food chief and the head of the biologics center, which oversees vaccines and gene therapies. The roles of surgeon general and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also unfilled.
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