While elected Democrats have been quick to rally around Vice President Kamala Harris after President Biden’s announcement that he would leave the 2024 presidential race, a vast majority of prominent Republicans have treated the development with suspicion or scorn.

A New York Times analysis of statements by Republican senators, representatives and governors found that their reactions to Ms. Harris’s presumptive candidacy and Mr. Biden’s withdrawal clustered around several themes, including the opinions that Mr. Biden must resign or that the events of the past few days amounted to election subversion or a bloodless coup. Recent polling suggests nearly 9 in 10 Americans believe Mr. Biden’s decision to step aside was the right one.

Several officials also suggested that Mr. Biden — who had been in Delaware recovering from Covid-19 but returned to the White House on Tuesday — had gone missing. A greater number made statements attacking Ms. Harris’s record, while a small handful posted positive or supportive comments. Emphasis in these quotations was added by The Times to highlight common themes in the statements.

These statements have tended to argue that Mr. Biden’s decision to end his candidacy was not his own, was not democratic or both. Many have mocked Democrats for positioning themselves as “defenders of democracy” in contrast to Republicans, following attempts by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Some of this language began to bubble up among Republicans even before Mr. Biden announced that he would drop out. During the Republican National Convention last week, Chris LaCivita, a top adviser to Mr. Trump’s campaign, described the pressure on Mr. Biden to withdraw as an “attempted coup.”

Statements along these lines have primarily argued that if Mr. Biden is not able to run for a second term, then he is unfit to continue to serve now. Many said should step down from the presidency. Some have gone further, suggesting that the 25th Amendment should be invoked to remove Mr. Biden from office.

These comments have, without providing evidence, accused Ms. Harris and other top Democrats of a cover-up to hide the state of Mr. Biden’s physical and mental fitness.

Mr. Biden was self-isolating with Covid-19 at his family’s Delaware beach house when he made the announcement that he would step aside from the 2024 presidential race. These comments drew attention to his lack of recent public appearances, in some cases even calling for a demonstration that Mr. Biden was still alive. Mr. Biden returned to Washington Tuesday afternoon and is set to give a televised address this evening.

Dozens of Republican officials made more typically political statements, including criticizing Ms. Harris as a candidate. One common line of attack, positing that Ms. Harris failed as a “border czar,” is misleading. (Some Republican candidates have already begun to run ads like this one, drawing attention to some of the more liberal positions Ms. Harris has taken in the past, particularly during her failed 2020 presidential primary campaign.)

A few Republican officials wrote kindly about their relationships with Mr. Biden or sent him well wishes.

In the table below, see which Republican elected officials made which types of statements, as of Tuesday night.

Olympic host cities make promises that are all but impossible to keep, and in recent years, the organizers’ wishful thinking about housing and neighborhood redevelopment has been one of the cruelest Olympic disappointments. As the 2024 Paris Games approach, we are seeing it all over again — displacement, gentrification and the unhoused “voluntarily” lured elsewhere with assurances of help that never materializes. What will it mean for Los Angeles, when the Games arrive in 2028?

In 2017, when Paris and Los Angeles were the last cities standing as potential Olympic sites — Boston, Budapest, Hamburg and Rome all withdrew — the organizers promised to stage Games that sidestepped the vexing social problems that emerged in Seoul, Rio, Tokyo and London.

Paris bidders vowed to rejuvenate the city’s banlieues, replenishing the housing stock by building an Olympic Village for the athletes in Seine-Saint-Denis, one of Paris’ poorest districts, and converting large swaths of it into so-called social housing. In Los Angeles, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti stated on late-night television, “I’m confident by the time the Olympics come, we can end homelessness on the streets of L.A.”

How has it worked in Paris?

In the lead up to the Games, French security officials are executing a “relocation plan” for the city’s migrants, refugees and unhoused people, expelling them from their encampments and squats — and from fragile connections to jobs and community — and escorting them onto buses that take them to 10 cities around France where temporary shelters and services have supposedly been organized. A government official told the New York Times the number was about 5,000. Human rights groups expect many more of the estimated 100,000 Parisians without steady housing to be exported as far from Olympic venues as possible.

Officially, the relocations are meant to lessen pressure on the asylum application process and to help migrants more efficiently apply for refugee status. But of course, this is all about optics. Most of those banished from Paris won’t qualify for permanent housing in their new locations, and as for asylum status, one lawyer in France calls the busing program “an antechamber to deportation.”

A recent report by a Parisian group whose name translates as the Other Side of the Medal documented a nearly 39% surge in encampment evictions in the City of Light in the year leading up to the Games, which open Friday. The researchers found that more than 12,500 people were displaced from Paris in 2023-24 alone. They have dubbed it “nettoyage social,” or social cleansing.

The French government has denied a connection between the Olympics and intensified displacement. But an email from a government official, first reported by the French newspaper L’Equipe, stated that the objective of the mass clearances was to “identify people on the street in sites near Olympic venues” and remove them before the Games commence. French National Assembly member Aurélie Trouvé told us that the program “is definitely connected to the Games and the need to offer a ‘clean,’ idealized image, even though it means that thousands of people are pushed afar.”

Trouvé’s district, Seine-Saint-Denis, north of the city center, is the Paris département most affected by the Games. It’s home to a new Aquatic Center and the Olympic Village — block after block of apartments and commercial space constructed on what was industrial land. But it remains to be seen whether it will help the 1.6 million residents of Seine-Saint-Denis, one-third of whom live below the poverty line, or simply push them aside. About 40% of the district lives in social housing; only a quarter of the Olympic Village units are earmarked for that population after the Games.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, the organizers of LA28 have steered clear of direct Games-associated urban renewal — no new venues will be built under LA28’s auspices and UCLA’s dorms and campus will become the Olympic Village.

And of course, Garcetti’s confidence about a homelessness cure is long forgotten. After Mayor Karen Bass checked out Paris’ preparations earlier this year, she told a reporter she was merely “hopeful” the Olympics would “be a catalyst to L.A. finally addressing homelessness in a way that is long-term, that eventually ends street homelessness.” She did offer this “major commitment”: The unhoused wouldn’t be moved to the hinterlands during the Games.

In December, a year into Bass’s Inside Safe program to address homelessness, just under 2,000 people had been helped off the streets and into hotel rooms. And in June, the city’s Homeless Services Authority announced that the latest point-in-time count found more than 75,000 unhoused residents in L.A. County, down a few ticks for the first time since 2018.

LA28 touts the legacy it will leave for the city and county but in a striking about-face from Garcetti’s optimism, Casey Wasserman, the chairman of the Los Angeles organizing committee, has relinquished all responsibility for helping to reduce homelessness. He told LAist’s Larry Mantle in 2021, “We’re not responsible for solving homelessness. We’re responsible for delivering the Olympic Games as a private enterprise in 2028.”

Wasserman is only being honest. The Olympics can’t solve gentrification, the affordable housing crisis or the needs of the unhoused. That’s not what the Games are created to do. Promises made otherwise should be seen as public relations. That hosting the Olympics may even make matters worse is one reason so many cities were happy to leave the job to Paris and L.A. for 2024 and 2028.

In a few weeks, the hoopla and the tally of gold, silver and bronze medals at the Summer Games will give way to a much more consequential reckoning: Paris’ winners and losers. It seems likely its most vulnerable residents won’t have fared well. Los Angeles should take heed.

Jules Boykoff, a former professional soccer player, is a political science professor at Pacific University in Oregon. He has written six books on the Olympics. Dave Zirin is the sports editor of the Nation and the author of 11 books on the politics of sport.

Speculation is mounting that President Biden will pardon his son, Hunter Biden, who was recently found guilty in a federal gun trial, despite the president and his staffers saying he will not give the first son a pass amid his legal troubles. 

“I’ve been very clear; the president is not going to pardon his son,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in December. Biden, himself, addressed the issue last month, telling ABC News that he ruled out pardoning his son and answering in the affirmative that he would accept the jury’s verdict in the case. 

The administration assured Fox News Digital on Tuesday that the president’s comments stood in regard to Hunter Biden’s pardon. However, the credibility of those press aides is in doubt after weeks of denying Biden was considering quitting the 2024 campaign. Biden ultimately bowed out of the race on Sunday afternoon in a social media post.

“The president spoke to this in his ABC interview. His comments stand,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates told Fox Digital on Tuesday when asked about any plans to pardon Hunter Biden.

HUNTER BIDEN FOUND GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS IN GUN TRIAL

Republicans have speculated the president will pardon his son, with Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz saying the odds of Biden pardoning Hunter sit at 100%. 

“I’m going to place the odds that Joe Biden pardons Hunter Biden at 100%. Hunter Biden will get a pardon as a result of this decision,” Cruz said during his podcast, “Verdict with Ted Cruz,” on Monday, referring to Biden’s decision this week to drop out of the presidential race. 

HUNTER BIDEN TRIAL ENTERS DAY 5 AFTER TESTIMONY FROM SISTER-IN-LAW-TURNED-GIRLFRIEND: ‘PANICKED’

“It will not happen till after Election Day. He’s not going to do it before Election Day. But he’s going to stick around. And after Election Day, I believe it is now 100% that Joe Biden will pardon Hunter,” he added. 

Hunter Biden was convicted by a federal jury on June 11 of lying about his drug use when purchasing a firearm in 2018. He was found guilty on three charges: making a false statement in the purchase of a gun, making a false statement related to information required to be kept by a federally licensed gun dealer, and possession of a gun by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.

Hunter Biden had pleaded not guilty in the case. 

Hunter Biden was found guilty on all counts by a Delaware jury. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum/File)

Prosecutors worked to prove that Hunter Biden lied on a federal firearm form, known as ATF Form 4473, in October 2018, when he ticked the “No” box when asked if he is an unlawful user of substances or addicted to controlled substances. 

Hunter Biden has a long history of drug abuse, which was underscored in his 2021 memoir, “Beautiful Things.” The book was repeatedly referenced by both prosecutors and Biden’s defense team amid the nearly seven-day trial. The memoir walks readers through Biden’s highs and lows with addiction to crack cocaine and attempts to get sober. 

Hunter Biden’s attorneys did not deny the first son’s long history with substance abuse during the trial, instead arguing that on the day Biden bought the Cobra Colt .38, he did not consider himself an active drug addict.

BIDEN WILL ADDRESS NATION FROM OVAL OFFICE ON DECISION TO EXIT 2024 RACE

Hunter Biden has not yet been sentenced in the case.

President Biden bowed out of the presidential election on Sunday afternoon in a letter posted to X. The White House and campaign had for weeks denied Biden would withdraw from the race, claiming he was in the election to win his rematch against former President Trump. 

Biden was self-isolating in Delaware after a COVID-19 diagnosis when he announced he would no longer seek a second term. He returned to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday after testing negative for the virus. 

In the wake of his departure from the race, others speculated on social media that Biden will likely pardon Hunter Biden. 

DOJ REVEALS IT HAS BIDEN TRANSCRIPTS AT ISSUE IN CLASSIFIED DOCS CASE AFTER INITIAL DENIAL

The gun trial was the first Hunter Biden faced this year. He is scheduled to stand trial in California in September over nine federal tax charges. The case was brought forth by special counsel David Weiss, who also oversaw the gun trial.