WELLFLEET, Mass. — Animal rescuers were trying to keep dozens of dolphins away from shallow waters around Cape Cod on Saturday after 125 of the creatures stranded themselves a day earlier.

Teams in Massachusetts found one group of 10 Atlantic white-sided dolphins swimming in a dangerously shallow area at dawn on Saturday, and managed to herd them out into deeper water, said the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Scouts also found a second group of 25 dolphins swimming close to the shore near Eastham, the organization said, with herding efforts there ongoing as the tide dropped throughout the morning.

Ten dolphins died during the stranding Friday at The Gut — or Great Island — in Wellfleet, at the Herring River.

The organization said it was the largest mass-stranding it had dealt with on the Cape during its 26-year history in the area. The Gut is the site of frequent strandings, which experts believe is due in part to its hook-like shape and extreme tidal fluctuations.

Misty Niemeyer, the organization’s stranding coordinator, said rescuers faced many challenges Friday including difficult mud conditions and the dolphins being spread out over a large area.

“It was a 12-hour exhausting response in the unrelenting sun, but the team was able to overcome the various challenges and give the dolphins their best chance at survival,” Niemeyer said in a statement.

The team started out on foot, herding the creatures into deeper waters and then used three small boats equipped with underwater pingers, according to the organization.

Those helping with the rescue effort include more than 25 staff from the organization and 100 trained volunteers. The group also had the support of Whale and Dolphin Conservation, the Center for Coastal Studies, AmeriCorps of Cape Cod and the New England Aquarium.

Joe Biden and top allies have sought to reassure Democratic donors that he can defeat Donald Trump, after a disastrous debate performance left wealthy backers divided over whether the US president should abandon his re-election bid.

Biden conceded that he “didn’t have a great night” as he met donors at a fundraiser in East Hampton, New York, on Saturday, where the cost of entry ranged from $3,300 to $250,000 per person, according to the invitation.

“I understand the concern about the debate. I get it,” Biden told supporters in the wealthy resort town.

But the president argued that “voters had a different reaction,” adding: “Since the debate, the polls show a little movement, moved us up actually.”

Few polls have been released since Thursday night’s debate, but betting markets moved dramatically against Biden during and after the showdown. A Morning Consult poll conducted on Friday found roughly half of Democratic voters said Biden should step aside in favour of another candidate.

Three donors familiar with the East Hampton fundraiser described the mood in the room as subdued, despite the president appearing stronger than he did on the debate stage on Thursday night.

Biden was expected to attend another fundraiser later on Saturday in Red Bank, New Jersey, hosted by the state’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy.

Senior Democratic lawmakers and party grandees have also reached out to donors in recent days. Chuck Schumer, the most senior Democrat on Capitol Hill, has tried to reassure several backers about Biden’s candidacy since the debate, said two party fundraisers.

There have been mounting calls for the president to step aside and allow another Democrat to be the party’s nominee for the White House ahead of November’s election.

At 81 years old, Biden has faced questions for months about his age and fitness for office. But any concerns that Democratic insiders had privately about the incumbent president spilled out into the open on Thursday night, after nearly 50mn Americans watched Biden struggle through a live, televised debate against Trump. The president rambled, appeared to lose his train of thought and struggled to complete sentences.

Biden has insisted that he will stay in the race, and campaign officials say he will participate in a second presidential debate planned for September.

The campaign has touted what it says has been a record influx of grassroots, or small-dollar, donations, since Thursday. A campaign official said on Saturday morning that the campaign had raised more than $27mn between the debate and Friday evening.

“It wasn’t his greatest debate. But it is 90 minutes . . . in a campaign and in an administration, where he has achieved enormous things,” Anita Dunn, a longtime senior adviser to Biden, said on MSNBC on Saturday. “Maybe it wasn’t a great debate. But he has been a great president.”

Asked if Biden’s inner circle had discussed him dropping out after the debate, Dunn replied: “No, the conversation we had is, ‘OK, what do we do next?”

Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of the Biden campaign, accused the “beltway class” of “counting Joe Biden out”.

“If we do see changes in polling in the coming weeks, it will not be the first time that overblown media narratives have driven temporary dips in the polls,” O’Malley Dillon said.

But the White House assurances have done little to quell public unease. Late Friday, the influential New York Times editorial board published a leader urging Biden to step aside.

On Saturday in East Hampton, reporters travelling with the president saw a group of onlookers holding signs that read: “Please drop out for US,” and “Step down for democracy,” and: “We love you but it’s time.”

The debate fallout has divided Democratic donors, whose support is critical to fund a campaign that is set to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to secure another four years in the White House. Biden’s long fundraising advantage over Trump has eroded in recent months. Trump outraised Biden in both April and May amid a swell of support following his conviction on 34 criminal charges in New York last month.

While some donors have redoubled their efforts to rally people around Biden, others are more skittish. One Democratic fundraiser noted some Wall Street megadonors intend to keep bankrolling the Biden campaign while trying to convince him to make way for another candidate. Another camp intends to withhold their donations altogether.

Still, several high-profile Democratic donors have come to Biden’s full-throated defence.

LinkedIn founder and billionaire Democratic donor Reid Hoffman sought to calm fellow deep-pocketed Biden supporters in a letter on Friday in which he acknowledged that the president had a “very bad debate performance”. But he added that it would be a ‘bad idea” to launch a public campaign to get him to step aside.

“This election is very close, and I don’t know who will win,” Hoffman wrote. “But as a political philanthropist, with 129 days until the election, I am doubling down on my bet that America will choose Biden’s decency, care, and proven success over Trump’s violence, lies, and chaos.”

Trump narrowly leads Biden in national opinion polls, according to the latest FiveThirtyEight average, as well as in most of the key swing states that will decide the outcome of November’s election.

One Democratic fundraiser said donors would be looking at polling in the coming days to plot their next move.

Several are already contemplating who they would throw their weight behind if Biden were to step aside, with Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer among the most popular names being floated. Three donors and bundlers also said Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries was gaining interest from Wall Street elites.

“The results of those polls will help donors decide what to do next . . . if the result is negative there will be consequences,” the fundraiser said.

But the Biden campaign showed little outward signs of concern about the polls at the weekend.

Geoff Garin, president of Hart Research and a pollster for the Biden campaign, said in a post on X Saturday evening that two surveys he had conducted in battleground states following the debate showed it had “no effect on the vote choice”.

“The election was extremely close and competitive before the debate, and it is still extremely close and competitive today,” Garin said.

Additional reporting by Alex Rogers in Washington

Seven people, including four children, were shot by a neighbor at a Nebraska home Friday evening, according to authorities, who said the crime could potentially be racially motivated.

At about 4:33 p.m., multiple 911 calls were made to report an active shooter situation on the 1200 block of Crestline Drive in Crete, a town in southeastern Nebraska, Nebraska State Patrol Col. John Bolduc said at a news briefing Saturday. Local officers and deputies responded to the scene, where they could still hear gunshots, including a single gunshot that came from a home across the street.

About 15 people were at the home at the time of the shooting, most of whom were outside in the yard, according to a news release. At least one of the victims was inside the home. It’s not clear at this time who was a resident and who was visiting.

“It was quickly determined that all gunfire had come from a single residence at 1810 Parkland Street,” Bolduc said, adding that a SWAT team responded to the home to apprehend what was believed to be “a barricaded subject.”

The SWAT team entered the home at about 6:40 p.m., where it found the 74-year-old suspect, Billy Booth, dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. A shotgun was found near Booth’s body, Bolduc said.

“Preliminary investigation shows that all rounds fired by Booth came from inside of his house,” Bolduc said. “Investigators are still actively working this investigation to understand everything that occurred, but at this point, we don’t believe there was any verbal contact between the suspect and any of the victims in the moments that led up to the shooting.”

Three of the victims found on the scene were adults, ranging in age from 22 to 43. Four were children, ranging in age from 3 to 10, Bolduc said. All of the victims are believed to be Hispanic, according to Crete Police Chief Gary Young Jr.

Six victims were taken to the hospital initially and a seventh realized he was injured later that evening, according to the state patrol. Four have been released from the hospital and three are still receiving care — two of whom are in a children’s hospital. All are expected to survive.

There was a history between the suspect and the victims’ families, according to Bolduc. The Crete Police responded to “several complaints” since 2021, most of which came from Booth regarding “driving behavior” in the neighborhood, according to Young, who also spoke at the news briefing.

“Not necessarily associated with the victims’ house, but cars driving too fast in the neighborhood, improper parking, nuisance properties, quality-of-life type issues,” Young said. “There was a single report from the victims that the suspect had flipped them off, told them to ‘Go home’ or ‘back to where they came from,’ to ‘Speak English.’”

A responding officer who interviewed the family and the suspect at the time was willing to escalate the case, but the family declined, saying they would contact police, Young said.

“That resolved the situation, so we had no further contact,” Young said.

When asked if there could be a racial element to the shooting, Young said, “There could be, we don’t know.”

“Certainly the context of ‘Go home’ and ‘Speak English’ lends itself to that,” he said.

A motive is still under investigation, Young said.

State patrol said they were on the scene of “an active situation” on the east side of Crete Friday evening and warned the public to “stay clear of the area.”

“The active situation has been resolved. There is no threat to the public,” state patrol posted on X an hour later.

Authorities are asking anyone with information on the case to come forward. The shooting remains under investigation.