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President Joe Biden told congressional Democrats in a letter on Monday that he will continue his reelection bid despite mounting concerns about his mental fitness and the viability of his campaign, while also hitting back at party “elites” in an interview ahead of a critical week on Capitol Hill.

“I want you to know that despite all the speculation in the press and elsewhere, I am firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump,” Biden wrote in the letter, obtained by CNN.

Biden sought to put growing concerns about his viability to rest in the forcefully worded letter.

“The question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now. And it’s time for it to end. We have one job. And that is to beat Donald Trump. We have 42 days to the Democratic Convention and 119 days to the general election. Any weakening of resolve or lack of clarity about the task ahead only helps Trump and hurts us,” Biden concluded. “It is time to come together, move forward as a unified party, and defeat Donald Trump.”

It’s a critical week for Biden’s political future as he seeks to tamp down intensifying fallout with the House and Senate back in session for the first time since the debate. More than a handful of top House Democrats told Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday that Biden needs to step aside amid concerns about down-ballot Democratic races.

Shortly after the letter was released, Biden called into MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” part of a strategy to do more “off-the-cuff,” unscripted engagements to quell concerns about his age.

But the appearance, while energetic, may not have had its intended impact.

Biden offered a lengthy and occasionally off-topic response to a question about his letter to Hill Democrats calling for unity and lambasted Trump for being on the golf course after the debate. Trump has largely stayed under the radar while Biden battles the news cycle.

“Well look — Democrats — Joe, let me say it this way, the reason I’ve been on the road so much, all over the country, while Trump is riding around in a golf cart, filling out his golf cart before, golf cart before he even hits the ball — but anyway, he hasn’t been anywhere in 10 days, I’ve been all over the country, No. 1,” he said.

He continued: “And I’ve gone over the country for several reasons, one, to make sure my instinct was right about the party still wanting me to be the nominee. And all the data, all the data shows that the average Democrat out there who voted, 14 million of them who’ve voted for me, still want me to be the nominee, No. 1.”

And in a pointed rebuke to his critics, Biden said, “I’m getting so frustrated by the elites. Now, I’m not talking about you guys, but by the elites in the party. They know so much more. But if any of these guys don’t think I should run, run against me. Go ahead. Announce — announce for president. Challenge me at the convention.”

The president will continue his outreach to Democratic lawmakers this week, a campaign official tells CNN. Tuesday will be a consequential day as members are set hold a planned caucus meeting with Jeffries, and one member told CNN they anticipate that is the day when the dam will break.

Congress returns to Washington on Tuesday for the first time since the June 27 debate on CNN that prompted widespread concern over Biden’s ability to secure a victory for Democrats in November and to serve an additional four years in office.

In the week following his disastrous debate performance, Biden personally reached out to roughly 20 House Democrats, a campaign official tells CNN, and has spoken with party leaders — including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Reps. Nancy Pelosi and James Clyburn — with a goal of reassuring them that the concerns within the party are being heard.

Since then, Schumer and Clyburn have voiced support for Biden, while Jeffries has remained mum.

Pelosi has said the questions surrounding Biden’s disastrous performance at the presidential debate were “legitimate.”

Asked about Pelosi’s comments, Biden told ABC News, “it was a bad episode. No indication of any serious condition. I was exhausted.”

On a call with senior House Democrats convened Sunday by Jeffries, a half-dozen lawmakers voiced their own concerns during a conversation one aide described to CNN as “pretty brutal.”

Those lawmakers — which CNN has reported to include Reps. Jerry Nadler, Adam Smith, Mark Takano and Joe Morelle — represent the highest-ranking Democrats on the Judiciary, Armed Services, Veterans Affairs and House Administration committees.

A campaign official declined to say whether the president had spoken directly with Sen. Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who organized a concurrent effort among like-minded senators to explore the possibility of an official request for Biden to step aside. Warner canceled a follow-up meeting scheduled for Monday evening, a source tells CNN, after news of the group’s efforts leaked. The next meeting will be Tuesday with Senate Democrats and their leadership.

Biden told ABC News that Warner was a “good man” but has a “different perspective.”

Biden’s campaign on Monday highlighted a list of supportive statements from Hill Democrats, seeking to amplify the voices who have expressed confidence in the president’s candidacy in recent days.

Also on Monday, the Biden campaign is hosting a donor call with its national finance committee, a source familiar with the call said, another sign of outreach. A senior Democratic adviser told CNN that Biden is expected to join the call, underscoring a top concern of the campaign about whether donors will continue to back him or redirect their money to House and Senate campaign efforts if he stays in the race.

Campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon will lead the call, and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore is expected to be among the speakers joining, the source said.

The call is expected to take place around 12 p.m. ET, and it’s unclear how many donors will join. The campaign held a similar call last week where O’Malley Dillon defended the president’s health and said the team was “clear-eyed, not pollyanish” about the president’s debate performance. About 500 donors joined that call.

Moore was among the governors who met with Biden at the White House last week, telling reporters after the meeting he supports the president but acknowledged the concerns from voters.

“We always believe that when you love someone, you tell them the truth. And I think we came in and we were honest about the feedback that we were getting. We were honest about the concerns that we are hearing from people,” Moore said.

He continued, “And we’re also honest about the fact that as the president continued to tell us and show us that he was all in, that we said that we would stand with him.”

CNN’s Jeff Zeleny contributed to this report.

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Sir Keir Starmer has won a huge parliamentary majority on strikingly thin support. Labour won only 34 per cent of the vote. The shift in support for the Conservatives since its big victory in 2019 also underlines the electorate’s extreme fickleness.

Perhaps most disturbing, a new report, Damaged Politics? from the National Centre for Social Research, argues that “Trust and confidence in governments are as low as they have ever been.” The details are sobering: “45 per cent would ‘almost never’ trust British governments of any party to place the needs of the nation above the interests of their own political party”; “58 per cent would ‘almost never’ trust politicians of any party in Britain to tell the truth when they are in a tight corner”; and 71 per cent think the economy is worse off because of Brexit, the flagship policy of the Tory government.

The challenge for Labour is not just to govern well, but also to restore trust in doing so. If it fails to do both, there has to be a good chance that it will be swept out of power next time. When trust in respectable policy and conventional politics collapses a large proportion of the electorate will embrace promises from mendacious demagogues. Yet the dangers of that form of politics have been perfectly revealed in the fate of the last government.

Thus, curtailing trade with the UK’s closest neighbour and biggest market could never have made it richer. An interesting recent paper, “Levelling Up by Levelling Down”, reaches three sobering conclusions: first, the overall output losses of Brexit (relative to a synthetic counterfactual) are at least 5 percentage points of GDP; second, Brexit did reduce regional inequality, but did so by “levelling down” — that is, damaging — prosperous regions more than less prosperous ones; and, third, support for right-wing populist parties rose in regions that experienced Brexit-related output losses. Thus, the losses caused by populist lies can benefit the politicians who propound them.

Yet this has not helped the Conservatives, because they cannot play the populist card as well as a Nigel Farage can. They also need the support of people who expect a governing party to show decency, sobriety, seriousness, reliability and competence.

Now comes Starmer. The big question is whether he can restore trust by delivering results, the only way likely to work in the long run. He has gained power not only because of the evident failures of the previous government, but also because of the exceptionally poor performance of the economy since the 2007-09 financial crisis, followed by the losses caused by Brexit, the pandemic and the “cost of living crisis”. The Conservatives had no answer to the former and were battered brutally by the latter three.

Starmer’s challenge, and that of his chancellor Rachel Reeves, is quite simple: he has promised to make things better while also changing very little. This caution was self-evidently excessive and will now make it far harder to govern.

One immediate problem caused by such caution arises from the imperative to improve public services, especially the National Health Service and local government. How will this be possible in an idling economy without borrowing more or raising more than a trivial amount in extra taxes? Yes, Labour might be lucky. Maybe the passing of all the recent shocks and the appearance of a stable government will be enough to reignite growth. But what if it is not?

My colleague, Robert Shrimsley, has argued that this may be the last chance for “centrism” in the UK. Alternatively, it might be the last chance for any government that tries to deliver results, rather than just channel anger. This government then must actually deliver those results.

As former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane argues, they will need to take some bold steps. I would stress coming much closer to the EU, radically liberalising planning, relaxing regulations, supporting innovation, decentralising power, reforming taxation, strengthening the pension system, enabling life-long learning, rationalising immigration, and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public services and administration. They are also going to have to raise taxes, including by reforming the taxation of land and replacing fuel duty with a tax on emissions of greenhouse gases.

The difficulty is that none of this will be easy and parts of it have been ruled out in advance. But breaking promises would further worsen the lack of trust they have inherited. This then is the trap that past failures and Labour’s promises have created. It is of huge importance that Starmer finds a way out of it.

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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a landmark decision that presidents have absolute immunity for their core constitutional powers.

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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a landmark decision that presidents have absolute immunity for their core constitutional powers.

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court found presidents have absolute immunity for exercising their core constitutional powers and are entitled to a presumption of immunity for other official acts. The court also ruled that presidents do not have immunity for unofficial acts.

Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman said he was “horrified” by the opinion and added “It seems to me to restructure and reconfigure the whole relationship between the executive branch and the other branches.”

The team at NPR’s Trump’s Trials podcast broke down what this decision means and how it may affect Trump’s legal cases.

Former President Donald Trump with attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove attends his criminal trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 29, 2024, in New York.

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1. Core constitutional powers

The Supreme Court found that presidents have absolute immunity for “core constitutional powers.” This references certain powers given to the president in Article II of the Constitution, which includes being the commander in chief of the military, the ability to pardon individuals and appointing ambassadors and judges to the Supreme Court.

This means that even if the president does something that is considered illegal while exercising those core powers, he or she cannot be prosecuted for that action.

2. Official acts and presumption of immunity

The court also ruled that Trump “is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.”

What is an official act? It’s the parts of the president’s job that don’t fall under Article II, like holding press conferences or speaking with foreign leaders.

Then there’s the presumption of immunity. The court is basically saying the president deserves the benefit of the doubt when it comes to immunity for official acts and, therefore, the bar is really high to prove otherwise. Litman said the path to overcome the presumption of immunity is unknown “because [the court] gave such sketchy guidance.”

What is known is that if an action is deemed “official,” DOJ special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the cases against Trump over federal election interference and classified documents, will have to prove that prosecuting said conduct does not infringe on the “authority and functions of the executive branch.”

3. Unofficial acts

The court did say there are actions that can be prosecuted, they just have to be unrelated to the president’s official duties. This likely won’t be a cut-and-dried situation when it comes to parsing out which of Trump’s actions were official or unofficial. To make matters more complicated, Litman explained:

“One big problem here is the court has said when you’re deciding — even if it’s an unofficial act — you cannot take into account any evidence of conduct that would be an official act.”

Meaning that even if the act is deemed unofficial and therefore open for prosecution, Smith will not be allowed to use certain evidence if that evidence is of an official nature. The court also ruled, “courts may not inquire into the President’s motives,” so the reasoning behind any potential criminal act conducted by a president doesn’t matter and cannot be presented in a trial.

“Even things that seem very clearly unofficial could be hard to prove that they are and could always give rise to an argument that they are [official],” Litman said.

4. How this applies to Trump’s legal cases

The court’s decision is a legal win for Trump. It further delays his federal election interference case, ensuring it will not go to trial this year. It also complicates the work of prosecutors in D.C., Florida and Georgia who are working on the other pending criminal cases he is facing. They will have to go through their cases and determine whether Trump does or does not have immunity related to 54 criminal counts he faces in the three remaining cases.

“For Jack Smith’s two cases [federal election interference and classified documents case], they’re hurting, but not certainly dead,” said Litman.

This decision is also impacting Trump’s conviction in the New York hush money case. Trump was scheduled to be sentenced on July 11 after being found guilty on 34 criminal charges. But that sentencing is now delayed until Sept. 18 at the earliest.

The bulk of the criminal actions in the hush money case did take place before Trump was president, but Litman, who attended parts of the trial, said some of the evidence against Trump is from actions after he became president. Trump’s defense team can now potentially argue that evidence should be thrown out because of the court’s ruling.

“I don’t think Judge [Juan] Merchan will credit those arguments enough to say there should be a new trial,” Litman said, speaking of the judge in that case.