Another Democrat Breaks Ranks, Calls for Biden to Withdraw From Race

The dean of Arizona’s congressional delegation, Representative Raúl Grijalva, is calling on President Joe Biden to step aside in the 2024 presidential election, following Thursday’s poor debate performance.

“If he’s the candidate, I’m going to support him, but I think that this is an opportunity to look elsewhere,” Grijalva told The New York Times Wednesday, regarding the incumbent president. “What he needs to do is shoulder the responsibility for keeping that seat—and part of that responsibility is to get out of this race.”

Grijalva becomes only the second Democrat in the House to openly call for Biden’s withdrawal, following Representative Lloyd Doggett on Tuesday. Only last week, Grijalva was defending Biden.

This shows that Biden isn’t just in danger of losing Democrats on the fence, or those in swing districts, but even progressives in safe seats. The 10-term Arizona representative has served in Congress since 2003 in a district that voted for Biden by a considerable margin, and once chaired the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Grijalva joins a host of Democrats who have privately expressed their concerns with Biden in recent days, with some even circulating a draft letter calling for Biden to withdraw.

Outside of Congress, Grijalva’s stance also carries considerable weight, as Arizona is a key battleground state. The Grand Canyon State has only been won by Democratic presidential candidates twice since 1948: Bill Clinton in 1996 and a narrow win for Biden in 2020, edging out Donald Trump by close to 10,000 votes. A post-debate internal Democratic poll shows Trump leading in the state by nearly 10 points, which could also have a ripple effect on Democrat Ruben Gallego’s attempt to win the Senate seat being vacated by the departing Kyrsten Sinema.

With pressure coming from an established member of Congress in a key battleground state, Biden has a decision to make. Democrats and Trump opponents will hope that he makes it soon, as conservatives are already strategizing on how to handle potential replacements.

A U.S. district court in Mississippi ruled Tuesday that three state congressional maps crafted in 2022 by the state’s Republican-led legislature violated the Voting Rights Act and dilute the Black vote in three majority-Black districts.

The lawsuit, filed in 2022 by the ACLU on behalf of the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP, argued that lawmakers redrew voting maps that ”dilute black Mississippian votes in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and contain 11 unconstitutional racial gerrymanders in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

According to the court’s decision, Mississippi lawmakers with the Standing Joint Committee presented and approved finalized maps, with no opportunity for public comment or presenting proposed maps, after holding a brief 15-minute hearing to issue new criteria for drawing legislative maps.

The alterations sparked concern among Mississippi legislators who noted the state’s demographics would require the addition of at least four majority-Black districts. Lawmakers pushing through their diluted maps stated that a voting map that reflects the state’s growing Black population “is not a map this state needs,” and pushed forward a voting map that redrew two majority-Black state Senate districts and one majority-Black state House district in March 2022.

A three-judge panel ruled on Tuesday that the maps did violate the Voting Rights Act but “did not establish the redistricting maps are unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.”

Alongside ruling that the legislative maps would have to be redrawn to comply with the Voting Rights Act, the district court also ruled that special elections would be required for the newly drawn districts.

“This is a win for voting rights,” the ACLU stated on X (formerly Twitter) on announcing the news. “The Mississippi State Conference NAACP is pleased with the decision of finding some of the districts discriminatory to Black voters, although we wish the court had gone further,” said Charles V. Taylor Jr., executive director of Mississippi’s NAACP.

Everybody can breathe a little easier: Mike Flynn is definitely not Donald Trump’s pick for vice president.

X, formerly Twitter, was abuzz Wednesday with rumors that Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser had been officially tapped to join his presidential ticket.

Users were set alight after seeing screenshots of what appeared to be a Federal Election Commission filing registered to Trump and “General Michael Thomas Flynn (Vice President).” The form also referred to a political committee called “Trump-Flynn 2024,” and included the address of a P.O. Box in Arlington, Virginia. The document appeared to be a Form 2, which any candidate must file within 15 days of entering a race.

Many on the internet started to run with the news, fearful that the former president had enlisted the QAnon-pushing conspiracy theorist to help him reclaim the White House. Fortunately for the fate of the free world, the filing was beyond phony.

The original document is not found on the FEC’s website, but on a webpage with a URL ending with upstract.com, which is a news aggregator website. It’s not clear that the website is actually associated with the document. But what is clear is that the whole thing is a moneymaking hoax.

Shortly after posting the screenshot, one user boasted that by posting, they had helped to artificially inflate the betting odds of Flynn’s becoming Trump’s running mate, making a quick buck.

The online fervor still hit a fever pitch, however, and Flynn had to weigh in to put the rumors to rest. “I just saw 2 unauthorized FEC filings referencing my name. They are fake news! I don’t know anything about them, and my office has alerted the FEC,” he wrote on X, before plugging his movie. So there, that settles it.

Earlier Wednesday, Flynn posted his enthusiastic, unconditional endorsement of Trump’s presidential run, asking voters, “Will your children live the American Dream or be enslaved by a corrupt, wasteful government of woke globalists?”

Joe Biden is quickly losing support from Democrats on Capitol Hill, who are urging him to step aside, according to a report from Axios.

These Democrats in Congress are reportedly building a consensus that Biden should withdraw from the race, with one warning that “the dam is breaking.”

“Over the last few hours, I am starting to hear from delegates that they really love Joe but want him to step aside,” another House Democrat said.

One lawmaker said that pressure was building from constituents, who are trying to drive the point home to their congresspeople.

“So many people are telling us he can’t win, he’s got to withdraw,” the representative said, saying that they were being “inundated” with messages from their district.

And one member of Congress suggested that Biden has lost the majority of the Democratic caucus.

Biden should “step down and help lead a transition of candidacy,” this lawmaker told Axios, claiming that a “very large majority of the caucus shares this sentiment.”

The report is grim. Newer House Democrats, many representing swing districts, reportedly told House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries that supporting Biden would mean risking their reputations. Some are even “resigned to the inevitability” that there needs to be someone new, and have come around to Vice President Kamala Harris to replace Biden.

According to Bloomberg, there’s even a draft letter calling for Biden to withdraw that is circulating around the House, with one congressperson saying it’s “all anyone is talking about.” However, there are Democrats who are publicly attempting to build up support for Biden, including some members of the Congressional Black Caucus, as well as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and influential Representative Jim Clyburn, according to the Axios report.

Will Biden be able to shore up enough support from his party to stay on the ticket, or will the pressure prove to be too much? It all depends on whether he in fact has lost the majority of elected Democrats. If he loses the support of party leaders, that could also be enough, especially if polls continue to show alarming trends. Ultimately, Biden will have to decide, and fast, as Republicans are already preparing for potential replacements.

Journalists covering the White House no longer believe that the Biden administration’s press team has the trust of the American people.

In interviews with The Daily Beast, several White House correspondents indicated that a lack of transparency around President Joe Biden’s failing health has compromised any credibility in new messaging.

During a Wednesday briefing, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre attributed Biden’s poor performance during last week’s debate to jet lag and a cold that would take a “toll” on anybody, including an 81-year-old president. She added that the notes on Biden’s health at the time of the debate should be seen as an “explanation” instead of an “excuse,” and further claimed that the administration had been “transparent” about his condition in the months leading up to the disastrous performance. However, she stopped short of promising the release of more of the president’s health details.

“It doesn’t come across as credible to say that there hasn’t been a change,” Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, told the Beast.

“They have told us repeatedly over the last few years, ‘He’s really sharp, he’s as sharp as he ever was,’” Baker continued, adding that “there are moments where he was not always at his sharpest.”

Other reporters were more blunt, mentioning to the Beast that the press team’s credibility was “in already pretty low regard.”

“This is not the first major thing they have not been forthright about,” another White House reporter told the Beast, referring to a communication blunder on debt ceiling negotiations in 2023.

“That credibility has been eroding, but this has kind of been a bit of an iceberg falloff. It’s been sorta happening for a while,” the unidentified reporter added.

In response, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates issued a statement highlighting Biden’s support for a free press with the ability to question his age.

“Joe Biden has always stood up for the ‘critical’ role of the free press in our society and said that it’s legitimate and reasonable for reporters to cover his age,” Bates said. “And we have highlighted that, as he has proven by earning the strongest record of any modern President, Joe Biden is unflinchingly capable and fighting for American families, with sharpness and resolve, every moment of every day.”