Ticket Change?

House Democrats exert pressure: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D–N.Y.) recently convened a virtual meeting of House Democrats to discuss whether President Joe Biden ought to be replaced by a Democrat with a better chance of beating Donald Trump.

"Among those saying explicitly that Mr. Biden should end his candidacy were Representatives Jerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee; Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee; Mark Takano of California, the ranking Democrat on the Veterans Affairs Committee; and Joseph D. Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the committee on House Administration," reports The New York Times. The mere fact that Jeffries convened this meeting is of great significance: It's an acknowledgment from the top that this ticket isn't going to work, and that Democrats have a serious problem that lawmakers do not trust party operatives, campaign staffers, or Biden advisers to solve.

Biden, in media appearances this weekend aimed at calming people's nerves about his age, said that only the "Lord Almighty" could convince him to step aside and allow another member of his party to run for president against Trump.

Divine intervention needed: "If the Lord Almighty came down and said, 'Joe, get out of the race,' I'd get out of the race," he told ABC. He added that the "Lord Almighty's not coming down."

When asked how he would feel if he lost to Trump, he responded: "I'll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that's what this is about." (Interestingly, ABC and the White House initially disagreed on whether Biden had used the word goodest. More here.)

"All the pollsters I talk to say it's a tossup—it's a tossup," Biden claimed. FiveThirtyEight, which maintains an "updating average for each candidate in 2024 presidential polls, accounting for each poll's recency, sample size, methodology and house effects," does not support this assessment, saying Trump is polling ahead by 2.3 points. Two recent Ipsos/Reuters polls assessed Biden vs. Trump as well as a Kamala Harris vs. Trump ticket; Harris performed better than Biden in these matchups. Recent Bloomberg/Morning Consult polls in swing states have Biden performing better than he has been—a recent uptick—but only in Wisconsin and Michigan, which simply isn't enough.

"Like a lot of people, I was pretty horrified," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D–R.I.) told WPRI, referring to Biden's debate performance. It seems as though all people of sound cognitive state agree: Biden cannot be kept on the ticket. It's Biden who refuses, along with several of the sycophants with whom he's surrounded himself.

French chaos: Marine Le Pen's far-right party, National Rally, didn't do as well as predicted in legislative elections yesterday. A left-wing coalition, the New Popular Front, won 178 seats, while President Emmanuel Macron's centrist party took 150; National Rally took 142.

No party will win a majority. It's gridlock time: As The New York Times describes it, the "lower house of Parliament, where most legislative power resides, [has] no governing coalition appeared immediately conceivable," meaning Macron's "centrists [are] squeezed between far-right and far-left groups that detest each other and him."

It's clear that Macron's gamble, to hold a snap election early versus later in the fall, did not pay off. Radicals on both left and right have more power and presence than before, while Macron—who was already stunningly unpopular—will be caught between the two.

"Finding a compromise candidate who could lead the next administration won't be easy," reports Bloomberg. "Some early contenders include Marine Tondelier of the Green party and Raphael Glucksmann of the center-left Place Publique; current prime minister Gabriel Attal might also end up staying on." Macron must step down, ending his second term, in 2027, and current Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has, of this morning, tendered his resignation (as is customary in French politics), which Macron rejected, meaning Attal may stay on.

Scenes from New York: Oysters keep dying instead of reproducing, creating a huge problem for the scientists working to restore the bivalve population in New York's waters.

QUICK HITS

• "The Philadelphia radio station WURD has parted ways with a host who interviewed President [Joe] Biden on Wednesday using questions provided to her by the Biden campaign, after the station said the interview violated its journalistic independence," reports The New York Times. "WURD said in a statement on Sunday that 'agreeing to a predetermined set of questions jeopardizes' its listeners' trust. The host, Andrea Lawful-Sanders, resigned in a mutual agreement, according to WURD."
• Joe Biden's excessive reliance on teleprompters, even in intimate environments like private donor events, has finally been covered by places like The Washington Post (now that it is safe to publish more explicitly negative pieces about the Democrats' guy). Big picture: If vast swaths of the media had stopped being so accommodating toward Biden earlier, and actually done their jobs, we might not be in this late-stage swap-out situation.
• Zyn imitators "pose a challenge for US regulators, who will have to contend with another wave of unauthorized nicotine products after an explosion in demand for unauthorized flavored vapes since last year," reports Bloomberg. 
• Sierra Leone is reportedly in the midst of an addiction crisis.
• "The anti-startup bias that is increasingly pervasive across the American government is a clear and present threat to the health and vitality of American technology success," write Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz in a manifesto they call "The Little Tech Agenda." One reason for this situation, they say, is because "tech startups as an industry do not show up in Washington D.C. and in the political system the way big companies do."