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US President Joe Biden appeared to be in a corner. More than a week of constant media scrutiny of the 81-year-old Democrat’s scattershot debate performance opposite a 78-year-old Donald Trump, whose stream of false statements went largely unchallenged by moderators, looked to have taken its toll. Biden’s allies on Capitol Hill and elsewhere were wavering, worried he may lose the 2024 election to a Republican who has threatened to short circuit democracy on his first day back in the White House. Yet on Friday, both at a rally in Wisconsin and in a much-hyped prime-time interview, Biden remained defiant. “I’m staying in this race,” he declared. “I’m not letting one 90-minute debate wipe out 3 1/2 years of work.” Later, in a televised interview, Biden said only the “lord almighty” could get him to quit, and that he’s content to roll the dice “as long as I gave it my all” against a man he has repeatedly said is a convicted felon who will destroy America’s system of government.
US President Joe Biden Photographer: Mustafa Hussain/Bloomberg
Since the debate, donors, allies and voters have expressed deep concern about Biden’s age or that the ceaseless focus on it could hand the election to Trump. “I know he agrees this is the most important election of our lifetimes,” Massachusetts Democratic Governor Maura Healey, a Biden ally, said Friday. But she urged him to “carefully evaluate whether he remains our best hope.” Almost all Democratic leaders are standing behind Biden. “The president is our nominee,” Maryland Governor Wes Moore said after a White House meeting July 3 with other Democratic governors. But big ticket donors like Christy Walton, the billionaire heir to the Walmart fortune, are among 168 signatories of a letter to the president asking him to “pass the torch of leadership to the next generation.” Still, even if Biden were to decide that the flood of criticism and concern was too high a tide to counter, it’s no easy job at this point in an election year to switch horses.
New British Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised a government of “stability and moderation” after his Labour Party crushed the spiraling Tories in a landslide victory that ended 14 years of Conservative rule. It was the latter’s worst election ever, winning only 121 of 650 seats in parliament. One point of consensus is that now-former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s approach to the election was a disaster. (Adrian Wooldridge contends in Bloomberg Opinion that the vote was more anti-Tory than pro-Labour.) In this year of major world elections, one that so far has seen the far-right ascendant, it’s the first big victory for the center-left. Here’s how Starmer, a 61-year-old former prosecutor, lifted Labour back to power. In France, far-right leader Marine Le Pen dismissed projections that show her National Rally party set to fall well short of an absolute majority in the French legislative election. If so, it would show the limits of her effort to re-brand a party notorious for racism and antisemitism.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer Photographer: Betty Laura Zapata/Bloomberg
Does America now have an imperial presidency? Legal experts warn that the Republican-appointed supermajority that controls the Supreme Court fractured checks and balances that have protected US democracy for 248 years when it arguably made prosecution of a former president next-to-impossible. And those six justices did so in a way that’s very helpful to Donald Trump—who picked three of them. The ruling likely delayed until after the election Trump’s trial over the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol and his alleged effort to subvert the 2020 election. If Trump wins, he is widely expected to end federal prosecutions over his alleged attempt to block the peaceful transfer of power and mishandling of top secret files on US defenses. Both the Supreme Court dissent and constitutional law experts warn Chief Justice John Roberts and his five colleagues have done grave damage to the American republic. “The court effectively creates a law-free zone around the president,” Democratic-appointed Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote. “Poof, problem solved for Trump—but not for democracy and the future of the rule of law,” Timothy O’Brien wrote in Bloomberg Opinion. But presidential immunity wasn’t the only thing the Roberts court came up with last week. It doled out a series of big wins for Wall Street, Big Oil and billionaire industrialists at the expense of securities regulation, agency expertise and the environment. Israel and Hezbollah, the powerful militant group in Lebanon, are lurching closer to all-out war even as Israel dispatches its intelligence chief to Qatar for talks after Hamas signaled broad agreement with a US plan for a cease-fire in Gaza. To the north, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that the US sees a grim “momentum” toward a wider war. Tensions rose as Israel killed a senior Hezbollah in an airstrike in southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah responded by launching more than 200 missiles and a swarm of drones at Israel. In Gaza, even amid the possible progress on a cease-fire, Israel ordered Palestinians to evacuate parts of Khan Younis, underscoring its struggle to stop Hamas from regrouping in areas that it previously attacked. And the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said that more than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed there since the war began.
Displaced Palestinians leave the eastern neighborhoods of Khan Younis in Gaza following Israeli army orders to evacuate. Photographer: Ahmad Salem/Bloomberg
Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical goals have never been much of a mystery. As he courts China, he’s pursuing Russia’s “indivisible security and development to replace the outdated Euro-centric and Euro-Atlantic models which gave unilateral advantages to individual countries,” he said at a security summit in Kazakhstan. The problem with that though is that Western leaders feel it may translate into more Russian aggression. Russia’s reliance on China also has gotten to the point where Beijing could end the war in Ukraine if it chose to, Finnish President Alexander Stubb said. Ukraine, for its part, wants Donald Trump—who has praised Putin while attacking Kyiv and even NATO—to let it know if he has a plan for ending the war. US hiring moderated in June and prior months were revised lower, as tighter policy helps squeeze a driver of US inflation—the red hot post-pandemic labor market. Such a gradual cooling in the labor market would support Federal Reserve policymakers seeking multiple reductions in interest rates this year as the remnants of inflation are finally killed off. Meanwhile, Americans are cutting back on essential items. To win them back, consumer goods giants are coming up with new uses for old products and upcharging for them—a phenomenon we’re calling “upflation.” Then there’s the European Central Bank, where officials looked past concern over longer-term inflation in cutting interest rates last month—arguing that waiting for a fully complete picture on prices would make them act too late. One after another, bankers at China’s premier investment bank are pledging their loyalty to the Communist party. Gone is the burning ambition, the long hours, the princely pay. So, too, is the steadfast belief that the markets rule. The swelling ranks of badge-wearing communists at China International Capital Corporation–roughly a third of its 2,000 investment bankers are now party members, insiders say–underscore the hard new realities for Wall Street-style capitalists in the China of Xi Jinping.
The China World Office 2 building, which houses the headquarters of China International Capital Corp. in Beijing. Photograph: Bloomberg Get Bloomberg’s Evening Briefing: If you were forwarded this newsletter, sign up here to get it every to get it every Saturday, along with Bloomberg’s Evening Briefing, our flagship daily report on the biggest global news.
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