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(WASHINGTON) — When President Joe Biden announced Sunday he wouldn’t seek reelection, he told Americans he believes it would be best for him to “stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term.”

The bombshell news immediately shifted focus to Vice President Kamala Harris, to whom Biden passed the torch by officially endorsing her to be the Democratic nominee, though she has work to do before the party’s convention next month.

While he’ll no longer be running, and will be a classic “lame duck,” he still must deal with pressing issues and his every move likely will continue to be scrutinized and criticized by Republicans.

Prominent GOP leaders who spent weeks calling on Biden to exit the 2024 race are now demanding that he should resign from office, claiming if he’s not fit to be a candidate, he’s not able to continue as president.

Former President Donald Trump, who last week accepted the Republican Party’s nomination, said Biden is “certainly not fit to serve” as he responded to the political earthquake that Biden would no longer be his election rival.

“If he’s not suited to run for office, I’m not sure he’s suited to serve the country, to continue in that capacity,” echoed House Speaker Mike Johnson, the most powerful Republican in Congress, in remarks to ABC News on Monday.

Johnson also suggested Harris and the Cabinet explore invoking the 25th Amendment, which controls when a president is deemed unable to discharge the duties of his office.

Some Republicans have also accused Harris of being involved in a Democratic “cover-up” about what they claim is Biden’s failing mental fitness.

The pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. already released an ad saying: “Kamala was in on it. She covered up Joe’s obvious mental decline. Kamala knew Joe couldn’t do the job, so she did it. Look what she got done: a border invasion, runaway inflation, the American Dream dead.”

The White House has pushed back that Biden “looks forward to finishing his term and delivering more historic results for the American people.”

Biden, who is currently in Delaware recuperating from COVID-19, will face major tests this week as he’s promised to make a speech to the nation on his decision to bow out of the race and as he hosts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington.

While no date or time has been given on his address on the 2024 race, Biden’s remarks will be a significant milestone in his career that spanned from being one of the youngest senators sworn into office to becoming vice president in 2008 and eventually president in 2020 after three previously unsuccessful attempts at the Democratic nomination.

“I think they should expect to hear from Joe Biden what he has carried in his heart for decades, which is a deep belief in the American people. Joe Biden is an optimist, he knows how hard Americans work, he knows what we are capable of,” Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a key Biden ally and co-chair of the Biden-Harris campaign, said on CNN on Sunday.

Coons said the calls Johnson and others for Biden to resign were “ridiculous” and that Biden stepping down from the office now would be a “great disservice” to the nation.

“I think President Biden has shown in recent weeks his ability to handle and manage complex international matters, to continue his lifelong record of service and his legacy of leadership in foreign policy and to make hard calls and tough choices that help make us stronger and safer here at home,” Coons said.

“I expect President Biden will finish out his term this year and there are things that remain to be done,” Coons said, citing annual spending bills that must pass Congress and Biden’s commitment to securing a peace plan for Gaza.

In addition to meeting with Biden, Netanyahu will address Congress on Wednesday and is also expected to meet with Harris.

“This coming week, I know he will be putting his heart in it once again,” Coons said of Biden’s cease-fire proposal to end the Israel-Hamas war.

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(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris became the front-runner for the Democratic 2024 presidential nomination after President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he was dropping out of the race and endorsing her.

Harris has expressed many of the same views as Biden on health care issues, including access to abortion and lowering prescription drug prices, both while campaigning against Biden for their party’s presidential nomination during the last general election and as Biden’s vice president.

However, on the issue of health care, Harris has veered to the left of Biden and called for a transition to a single-payer system, something Biden has not endorsed.

“We can look back to 2019 and get an idea of what she views, but she also now has four years of being part of an administration,” Dan Mallinson, an associate professor of public policy and administration at Penn State Harrisburg, told ABC News. “So, she’s going to have to think about, how does she differentiate herself, right? As ‘This is who I’m going to be as president’ but also, she can’t kind of undermine the work that’s been done over the past administration, so she’s still connected to that.”

Here’s where Kamala Harris stands on various health care issues:

Single-payer health care system

Harris has previously expressed support for a single-payer health care system, sometimes referred to as “Medicare for All.”

Although she initially indicated during a 2019 presidential campaign debate that she would support eliminating private health insurance, Harris walked back her support and instead unveiled her own health care plan. It called for expanding Medicare access to all Americans and setting up a 10-year transition period that would automatically enroll newborns and the uninsured, allowing doctors time to enter the system and help employers choose from federally designated programs.

The plan also preserves a role for private insurance companies, allowing Americans the option to obtain health insurance through the public Medicare plan or through a Medicare plan offered by a private insurer.

“My understanding is this is another area where she is a bit more progressive than the president in that [she] is supportive of the Affordable Care Act and the expansion that occurred, but is among those who argue that a next step then would be to provide that kind of Medicare for All idea, or a public option,” Mallinson said. “Whether that has broad enough political support, even among and within the Democratic Party, is less clear.”

Biden has previously suggested he would veto a “Medicare for All” bill, arguing that it would raise taxes for the middle class. Instead, he has focused on strengthening the Affordable Care Act that was signed into law in 2010 by then-President Barack Obama, when Biden was his vice president.

Reproductive rights

Similar to the president, Harris has been an outspoken advocate for abortion rights and has criticized the U.S. Supreme Court for overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending the federally protected right to abortion.

Both Biden and Harris have said they consider it a priority to protect reproductive freedoms, with Harris declaring, “To truly protect reproductive freedoms, we must restore the protections of Roe.”

However, Harris has been more amplified in her support for reproductive rights, becoming the first vice president to visit a clinic run by Planned Parenthood and criticizing Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance for seemingly backing a national abortion ban and blocking protections for in-vitro fertilization.

Additionally, Harris said during an MSNBC town hall in May 2019 that, if elected president, she would require any state-passed law limiting reproductive freedoms to undergo approval from the Department of Justice before being enacted.

“Biden, having a strong Catholic background, had been much more moderate on the issue of reproductive rights, but [he] has become much more vocal after the overturning of Roe versus Wade,” Mallinson said. “But Kamala Harris, on the other hand, [had a] much stronger profile on reproductive rights and [was] a much stronger vocal advocate, and I think will be on the campaign as well.”

Lowering prescription drug costs

Biden and Harris have also been aligned on lowering health care costs. Under the Biden-Harris administration, the cost of insulin has been capped at $35 per month for many Americans, and the federal government has begun direct price negotiations on 10 widely used drugs paid for by Medicare Part D, with plans to add more drugs to the list in the future.

As a candidate in 2019, Harris also supported a plan authorizing the Department of Health and Human Services to set new price caps for all drugs sold in the U.S., based on prices charged in other developed countries for the same medications.

Additionally, if Congress declined to pass legislation to lower prescription drug costs, Harris proposed a potential executive action that would ask for a report on which pharmaceutical companies have drugs being sold at high prices. A warning would then be issued for those companies to lower their prices and, if they don’t, a lower-priced competitor would be placed on the market.

Mallinson said that if Harris does become president, she would likely attempt to expand both the effort to lower prescription drug costs and the negotiations to cover more drugs. However, Mallinson said he’s unsure if Harris would be able to exercise the executive actions detailed in her 2019 plan.

“You’ve seen both former President Trump, as well as President Biden, make a lot of promises about executive action, and then it’s actually difficult to follow through on that,” he said. “And also, what a lot of people don’t understand, is the president just can’t change anything through an executive order. They’re not they’re not kings and queens. Those orders only allow them to make changes that are already within their authority as the executive in a certain area.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Randi Weingarten, head of the 1.7-million member American Federation of Teachers and a close ally of President Joe Biden, said she’d forgotten to bring something on stage with her at the union’s national convention in Houston, Texas on Monday.

“I don’t have tissues — I should, unfortunately,” Weingarten said, before thanking Biden for his achievements. A day earlier, Weingarten had been among the first labor leaders to express support for the newly announced presidential candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris.

“As you can imagine, my speech changed a lot in the last few days,” Weingarten told the audience.

The sentiment reflects a bittersweet moment for organized labor, a key part of the Democratic coalition, which has indicated widespread support for Harris after remaining an ally of Biden up until his decision to step aside.

Within hours of Kamala’s candidacy, some of the nation’s largest unions offered an outright endorsement and others heaped Harris with praise, while acknowledging that an internal endorsement process must run its course.

The support owes to a perception of Harris as a labor ally and an heir apparent to Biden, as well as an acknowledgment of the difficulty of a shortened campaign in which unions are eager to turn toward defeating Trump, union leaders and labor experts told ABC News.

The onrush to back Harris is part of wider movement among Democratic Party leaders and elected officials that has made her an overwhelming front-runner for the nomination. No challenger has emerged as the party hurtles toward its convention next month.

“Labor unions are coalescing quickly around Kamala Harris,” Stuart Applebaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Union, which endorsed Harris, told ABC News. “We’re excited.”

The Service Employees International Union, whose 2 million members make it the nation’s largest private sector union, endorsed Harris on Sunday. So did Local 3000 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, a labor organization in the Pacific Northwest, which drew attention last week when it became the only Biden-aligned union to call for him to step aside.

On Monday, several other unions followed suit with endorsements, including the American Federation of Teachers.

Additional unions have released statements lauding Harris but stopping short of an outright endorsement as the organizations undergo a formal process for granting support.

AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor organization, which boasts 60 affiliate unions with 12.5 million members, issued a statement on Sunday speaking of Harris in favorable terms but remains in the midst of its endorsement process.

“It’s safe to say things are moving pretty quickly,” Steve Smith, deputy director of public affairs at AFL-CIO, told ABC News, noting that several of the affiliate unions had endorsed Harris. “She has close ties to many, many unions.”

The United Auto Workers, an influential union in key swing states, will likely convene its international executive board to discuss a possible endorsement, a union official said. In a statement, the official called Harris an “ally” and a “champion” for workers. UAW had previously endorsed Biden.

Still, at least one Biden-aligned labor leader voiced reluctance to join his peers in backing Harris. John Samuelsen, president of the Transport Workers Union, described the public push to remove Biden from the Democratic ticket as a “betrayal.”

“They did it in a way that tarnishes Biden and I don’t like it,” Samuelsen told ABC News.

Samuelsen said he wants to wait to see who joins Harris as her vice presidential nominee, assuming she becomes the nominee.

“I don’t have a relationship with her,” he added. “I got to know Biden pretty well. I have faith in Biden that he wouldn’t screw transport sector workers. At this point, workers have been betrayed so many times by both parties that it doesn’t make any sense not to be as prudent as possible.”

The Teamsters, a 1.3-million member union whose President Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention last week, has not released a statement about Harris. The union has not traditionally endorsed a candidate until after both major party conventions, a spokesperson told ABC News.

On the whole, unions have come out in support of Harris not only because of Biden’s perceived strength with organized labor but also the limited time remaining in the campaign, Johnnie Kallas, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois, told ABC News.

“The reality is we’re three-and-half-months out from Election Day,” Kallas said. “If this was a conversation, it should have been had a year ago.”

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(GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.) — Former President Donald Trump and his allies have quickly pivoted to attacking Vice President Kamala Harris since President Joe Biden on Sunday suspended his reelection campaign and the Democratic Party coalesced behind the president’s former running mate.

Both the Trump campaign and groups supporting him are accusing Harris of being “complicit” in a cover-up of what they claim is Biden’s decline making him unfit for office.

At the same time, they are painting her as an even more “radical” liberal.

Trump’s team and his allies have been fast in firing off new attacks on Harris, already running both television and online ads in key swing states.

A new campaign video released on Sunday shortly after Harris jumped in the race as a presidential candidate claimed Harris helped Biden “screw up the border,” emphasizing her role in the Biden White House as the “border czar” and accusing her of not visiting the border enough — rhetoric Trump has used in the past during his own border visits.

The Trump campaign has also launched new social media ads attacking Harris, highlighting her gaffes while describing her as a “far more radical” candidate.

Pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. too immediately launched an ad in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona, pushing unfounded claims alleging Harris had concerns about Biden’s mental fitness and worked to cover it up.

A source close to the super PAC told ABC News, “we will expand the buy,” adding that “there is going to be tremendous chaos within the Democratic Party and our job now is to seize on that.” The plan will be to continue to frame Harris as complicit in hiding Biden’s decline while also focusing on her record as a prosecutor and vice president, according to the source.

Trump himself has also been lashing out at Harris during his recent campaign stops as his campaign began privately polling Trump versus other candidates — increasingly name-calling her and attacking her credibility. Until recently, her name would only occasionally come up on Trump’s campaign trail — particularly during his border visits and while attacking her record on border security.

Just this past weekend, at a campaign stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump poked fun at Harris’ laugh — a personality trait his campaign has also spotlighted.

“I call her ‘Laughin’ Kamala.’ Have you seen her laughing? She is crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. She is nuts,” Trump said.

Even before Biden dropped out on Sunday, Trump long argued that Harris, along with other members of the Democratic Party, was secretly running the show because Biden was not fit to be president — an argument that they hope will help them as they attempt to point the blame on Harris for policies from the Biden administration.

“When you vote for Biden, you’re probably voting indirectly for Harris anyway,” Trump added on Saturday.

“We’re going to defeat ‘Crooked Joe Biden’ and Laughin’ Kamala Harris,’ and we’re going to take back the White House, and we’re going to take back our country,” Trump similarly said at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, two weeks ago — shortly before he was rushed off the stage after an assassination attempt on him.

A campaign rally at his Doral golf course in Florida earlier this month, Trump zeroed in on Harris’ border record, saying she has the “worst border” in history.

“As vice president, Kamala Harris was given two jobs — two very important jobs, actually,” Trump said. “First, she was put in charge of the U.S. border security at the border. And she never showed up. She’s never gone.”

He then attacked Harris’ role in the Biden administration’s foreign policy, claiming she “failed” to deter Russia’s attacks on Ukraine.

“Both times the result was a deadly failure,” Trump said.

The RNC Research social media account, managed by the Trump campaign and merged with the Republican National Committee, also posted several “flashbacks” on Sunday following Biden’s departure from the ticket, using Harris’ own words in an attempt to remind voters on what they believe is a failed record.

Again, those attacks centered around the claim that Harris’ was complicit in a cover-up as well as her role on the border.

“The biggest scandal in a generation — and Kamala is right at the center of the coverup,” one post by the Trump campaign suggested.

In another video posted, Harris is seen on the 2019 Democratic primary debate stage, raising her hand to suggest she would make illegal border crossings a civil, not, criminal offense.

As the Trump campaign attempts to capitalize on outlining Harris’ border policies, Harris has been on the campaign trail talking about abortion. She has issued several attacks on Trump’s proposed abortion policy.

Abortion bans have emerged as a divisive issue among Republicans since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overrule Roe v. Wade’s nationwide guarantee to access the procedure.

“And understand, the former president wants to pass a national abortion ban to outlaw abortion in every single state, but we will not let him,” Harris said last month at an event in Texas. “We will not let that happen.”

Harris continued, “America must trust women, America must honor individual choice, America must defend freedom.”

Hailing from California where she served as attorney general, the Harris campaign is also starting to tout her previous role in contrast to Trump’s convictions, framing the potential battle between the two as prosecutor vs. criminal.

“Vice President Kamala Harris has held criminals accountable her entire career — and Donald Trump will be no different,” Harris for President Spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement. “That’s the contrast the American people will see over the next 106 days.”

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(MIDDLETOWN, Ohio) — Speaking at his first solo rally in his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, former President Donald Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance attacked the Democratic Party over President Joe Biden stepping down as the party’s nominee and getting behind Vice President Kamala Harris.

“If you want to run for president, you’ve got to make your case to voters. You make your case to voters,” Vance said.

“[Trump] faced some good competition, and he made his case to voters,” Vance later said.

Vance’s rally came one week after he was announced as former President Donald Trump’s running mate for the 2024 presidential election.

On Monday, Vance took center stage in his hometown, which has played a crucial role in his upbringing and was the catalyst for much of what has happened to him, including being the backdrop of his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” in which he shared his story of growing up in poverty in America’s Rust Belt and being surrounded by violence and addiction.

The Ohio senator made his first official appearance at a campaign rally on Saturday in Grand Rapids, Michigan, alongside Trump. During that appearance, Vance wasted no time attacking Harris, who only one day later would receive an endorsement from Biden and other Democrats to top the Democratic ticket.

During the rally, Vance claimed “elite Democrats got in a smoke-filled room and decided to throw Joe Biden overboard.” Biden left the race amid mounting calls from fellow Democrats to do so since his poor debate performance last month.

“This is not OK, ladies and gentlemen. You cannot, for three-and-a-half years, take a guy who clearly didn’t have the mental capacity to do the job,” Vance said.

Vance then turned to Harris and Senate Democrats, repeating a claim Trump has made that she was complicit in hiding Biden’s mental fitness.

“Kamala Harris lied about it. My Senate Democratic colleagues lied about it. The media lied about it,” Vance said, adding it was an “insult to voters.”

During his remarks, he said the Trump-Vance ticket would fight for different groups of people including workers, parents and grandmothers.

“What President Trump and I want to do — we want to a drill, baby drill,” Vance said. “We’re gonna shut down that border, we’re gonna put American citizens first, because that’s what American citizens are gonna elect us to do. It’s common sense.”

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