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‘A direct and candid conversation’: Democratic governors speak out before meeting with Biden

July 3, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — Some of the Democratic governors meeting with President Joe Biden Wednesday evening at the White House are saying beforehand they hope to hear candidly from him about the path forward for his reelection campaign, and to get a sense of how he plans to speak about himself and his campaign to the American public.

In the wake of Biden’s much-criticized performance in Thursday’s presidential debate a rising number of Democratic governors are calling for better communication, and in a twist, some of those attending have been talked about as possible replacements should Biden decide to drop out.

ABC News has confirmed that Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healy, Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee, and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore are among the governors attending in person.

Others will attend the Biden 6:30 p.m. ET meeting in the Roosevelt Room virtually.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee will attend virtually.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers will not be attending, although Evers plans to appear with Biden at an event in Wisconsin on Friday.

In an interview on CNN on Tuesday evening, Beshear outlined what he hopes to hear during Wednesday’s meeting, saying that governors want “a direct and candid conversation with the president.”

“I think we also want to talk about strategy … when governors get out there, we put our own credibility and brands on a line,” he said.

“And so I think that these governors who want to be helpful just want to make sure when they’re talking one-on-one with people in our communities that we are giving them accurate and reliable information.”

A powerful Democrat whose name has been floated as a possible replacement for Biden at the top of the ticket in 2024, Pritzker said Tuesday night on CNN that he has only spoken with the president’s reelection campaign — but not Biden himself — since last week’s debate.

Pritzker, who leads the state where the Democratic National Convention is set to take place next month, said Biden “needs to communicate more,” if he plans to rectify his performance.

He offered a similar desire to Beshear, saying that he hopes to hear about the Biden campaign’s strategy if the president stays in the race.

“I think that there’s a healthy conversation that will happen, with the president, I hope, expressing what he intends to do going forward in the campaign and reassuring everybody that this is the right course to make sure that we stay the course with him,” he said.

Asked if he’d back Vice President Kamala Harris were Biden to drop out, Pritzker responded that the party had a “great bench.”

Wednesday’s meeting comes after Democratic governors held a call on Monday to discuss Biden’s debate performance, a national Democratic official familiar with the call confirmed to ABC News. The call was not out of concern over Biden’s performance, but simply to “touch base” on the debate, multiple sources told ABC News.

Some governors have since framed it as a general meeting where they also spoke about the debate.

“Democratic governors are some of the President and Vice President’s most proactive and vocal supporters because they’ve seen how the Biden-Harris Administration’s accomplishments are directly benefiting their residents. The Biden/Harris team is in constant communication with the governors and their teams, including about yesterday’s meeting,” the Democratic official said in a statement.

The call was organized by Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who is the Chairperson of the Democratic Governors Association. The White House was aware of the call prior to it happening.

Speaking to reporters on Monday afternoon at an unrelated press conference, Walz said, “We got on a call, we talked about some of the things that we’re doing, talking about the political races and things, and talking just candidly about some of the natural disasters each of us are facing in our states, whether it be wildfires or flooding,” he said.

“And then talk turned a little bit to what was obviously a poor performance in last Thursday’s debate. And governors are asking questions about what is the plan? How are you going to do this? How are we going to message this?”

Asked about the upcoming meeting with Biden, Walz said he thinks the governors will discuss “some of … the same concerns that we talked about.”

“I think the question is, how does that impact how the country runs? How does it impact what an election looks like?,” Walz said.

Even some close allies of the president are indicating that the meeting between him and the governors is less about policy and more about how Biden is coming across.

Appearing on CNN on Wednesday morning, Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn, who is a key campaign surrogate for Biden, said that the governors will likely focus on how the president speaks to them, when asked what he thinks they want to hear from Biden.

“I would say it this way. The governors will listen to the president, and I don’t think it’s all that important as to what the president says, but the way he says it is what will weigh heavily on these governors — what his speech is like, how he follows up with questions,” Clyburn said.

“So I think the governors will not just be listening for what he has to say, but looking at the way he says it, and they will react, hopefully, honestly with him.”

ABC News’ Brittany Shepherd, Isabella Murray, Rachel Scott, Lauren Peller, Tal Axelrod, and Mike Pappano contributed to this report.

Biden privately signals ‘open mind’ on path forward, sees next few days as critical: Sources

July 3, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — Sources told ABC News on Wednesday that President Joe Biden has privately acknowledged that the next few days are critical to determining whether he can stay in the race for a second term.

“This is false,” White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said about the ABC News reporting and similar accounts from other news organizations.

Biden has privately told at least two people close to him in the last few days that he recognizes how difficult his political predicament is.

While he still views himself as the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump, he signaled to one ally that he is keeping an “open mind” about his path forward, sources familiar with conversations tell ABC News.

He has campaign events scheduled in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the coming days, an interview scheduled with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos on Friday, and a news conference next week at the NATO summit. All of those events represent big opportunities for Biden to change public perceptions, according to those around him.

Publicly and privately, the president is making calls and arranging meetings to communicate his view that he remains the strongest candidate to take on Trump.

Over the last few days, he has spoken to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chris Coons, Rep. Jim Clyburn, among others.

Biden was scheduled to have a private lunch with Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday and a meeting with Democratic governors later in the day, important marking points. Both were added to his schedule in the aftermath of the debate.

A person close to the president says he understands the stakes of this election and the importance of defeating Trump and has continued to insist he is ready for this moment.

“I would not be running again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul I can do this job,” Biden said in North Carolina after the debate.

Biden has been consistent that he doesn’t want to be pressured into making the decision; he has remained “calm” during this moment, according to people who have interacted with him. Close members and associates are giving him space to see if that continues.

Separately, The New York Times has reported that Biden is weighing whether to continue in the race, a claim that the campaign is angrily denying.

“That claim is absolutely false. If the New York Times had provided us with more than 7 minutes to comment we would have told them so,” Bates said.

Sources contacted by ABC News said he has not gone so far, to their knowledge, as to say he cannot salvage his campaign.

Biden to award Medal of Honor to Civil War heroes, 162 years later

July 3, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — Two Union soldiers who 162 years ago took part in one of America’s first special operations will be posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor on Wednesday.

Descendants of Pvt. George Wilson and Pvt. Shadrach received a long-awaited call from the White House telling them the Civil War heroes would be awarded the nation’s highest military honor for “gallantry and intrepidity” in defense of the Union.

President Joe Biden was on the other line, they said, inviting Theresa Chandler, the great-great-granddaughter of Pvt. Wilson, and Gerald Taylor, the great-great-nephew of Pvt. Shadrach, to accept the medal on behalf of the men who, as a part of a group of 24 volunteers, snuck behind Confederate lines in an act of unprecedented bravery.

The Union soldiers — acting as spies in civilian clothing — managed to penetrate 200 miles into Confederate territory, where they commandeered a train — “The General” — and drove it 87 miles from Georgia to Tennessee.

In what became known as “The Great Locomotive Chase,” on April 12, 1862, the Union raiders destroyed Confederate railroad tracks and telegraph lines — earned 19 of the men Medals of Honor, becoming the first group of Army soldiers to receive it.

The ambitious plot, despite wreaking havoc, failed. The soldiers were captured. Some escaped and received their medals after the war, while a group of eight of the raiders — including Wilson and Shadrach — were tried and hanged by the Confederacy.

Because of what historians attribute to an oversight, Wilson and Shadrach never received the award posthumously.

Ron Shadrach, a descendant of Pvt. Shadrach, who was only 21 when he volunteered for the mission, and historian Brad Quinlon, teamed up to push Shadrach and Wilson’s case. Text from a 2008 act of Congress even cleared the way for Wilson and Shadrach to be honored, but for reasons resembling “red tape,” some family said, the call simply never came.

Shadrach and Quinlon met in 2012 and made their case for 12 years, but even before them, a relative of Pvt. Shadrach was sending letters to President Jimmy Carter.

At the outset of the Biden Administration, two former generals — one a four-star — joined Shadrach and Quinlon’s efforts.

Quinlon believes the clandestine mission, which the White House describes as one of the first special operations in United States history, if successful, would have shortened the Civil War by as long as two years.

“I mean these were common citizens — a laborer, a carpenter,” he said.

“They enlisted. They weren’t drafted; they enlisted voluntarily. And then all of a sudden you’re getting the word, you know, we’re asking for volunteers to come do what? Go in to a hundred miles of Confederate territory to steal a train. They stayed on. They were given a chance, they could have left after that, but they stayed on.”

“I guess, unless we’ve really done it, do we really know what courage that took?”

Before they were hanged, Pvt. Wilson is reported to have given a brief speech from the gallows in which he said he did not regret his action to help save the Union.

“He proclaimed that they would yet see the flag of the United States wave over them again,” Ron Shadrack said.

Two years later, they would.

Shadrack labored over the case for more than 12 years to rectify the historical record, but, above all, he said, he did so in service of his ancestor’s sacrifices.

“We can’t really comprehend what they went through,” the Ohio native said, a bout of imprisonment that including lashing and torture.

“I had wanted to serve my country, and I hadn’t,” Shadrack said. “And so now I’ve been able to do this…” he said, choking up, seemingly reckoning with this moment – a present day that would pay tribute to a day 162 years ago for which he has so long fought.

“And I think it’s, it’s something that any ordinary American would do,” he said. “It’s what we do.”

Quinlon, who in his work has studied the acts of Medal of Honor recipients, said the award — given to some 3,500 warfighters in U.S. history — has documented the American story on the battlefield.

“I wouldn’t have taken the project on if I didn’t feel it was the right thing to do. I understand the Medal of Honor. I understand where it stands today with our military. And every military person looks up to a Medal of Honor recipients. Even generals take a seat to a Medal of Honor recipient,” he said.

A future Medal of Honor recipient saved Quinlon’s father’s life in the Philippines in World War II, losing his life as he fought off the Japanese.

“I am here because of what William Shockley did on March 31st, 1945. I understand the valor and sacrifice of the Medal of Honor,” Quinlon said.

Following Supreme Court ruling, what happens next in Trump’s criminal hush money case?

July 3, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — With Donald Trump’s sentencing in his New York hush money case delayed until September following Tuesday’s decision by Judge Juan Merchan, the judge now faces the task of applying the Supreme Court’s new test for the limits of presidential immunity to the former president’s criminal conviction.

Trump in May was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a 2016 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump’s lawyers have argued that the judge should “set aside” the jury’s verdict in the case because the jury heard evidence during the trial that would have been protected by presidential immunity, based on Monday’s ruling by the Supreme Court that Trump is entitled to “at least presumptive immunity” from criminal prosecution for official acts taken while in office.

To rule on the defense’s request — which Judge Merchan plans to do by Sept. 6 — he will likely have to answer two key questions, according to former federal prosecutor Jarrod Schaeffer.

The first question is, would the Supreme Court’s decision have limited some of the evidence and testimony at trial?

Rather than argue that Trump’s conduct related to Daniels’ hush money payment constituted official acts of the presidency — an argument a federal judge rejected last year — Trump’s lawyers have focused on what they have called “official-acts evidence.”

Evidence including Trump’s social media posts in 2018, a government ethics disclosure, and phone records were cited as examples of evidence related to official acts that prosecutors emphasized during their closing arguments to the jury.

Prosecutors introduced some of Trump’s tweets about his former lawyer Michael Cohen to emphasize what they called a “pressure campaign” to prevent him from cooperating with investigators in 2018.

“Michael is a businessman for his own account/lawyer who I have always liked & respected. Most people will flip if the Government lets them out of trouble, even if it means lying or making up stories,” Trump wrote in an April 2018 tweet.

The Supreme Court’s decision on immunity included some protections for Trump’s communications — including tweets — because they “fall comfortably within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities”; however, the ruling added that lower courts would need to determine if Trump was speaking in his official capacity as president or in an unofficial function such as a candidate for office or party leader.

Merchan declined to consider Trump’s last-minute challenge to some evidence, including the tweets, ahead of trial, determining that Trump’s request to exclude the evidence was “untimely.”

Defense lawyers also suggested that some testimony from Trump’s former White House communications director Hope Hicks would have been protected by immunity.

“I think Mr. Trump’s opinion was it was better to be dealing with it now, and that it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election,” Hicks testified during the trial regarding a 2018 conversation with then-President Trump about Stormy Daniels’ accusation of a long-denied 2006 sexual encounter with Trump.

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass later described that testimony to the jury as “devastating,” saying that it “puts the nail in Mr. Trump’s coffin.”

According to Schaeffer, Hicks’ testimony poses a novel question to Merchan, who will need to weigh the Supreme Court’s limit on using “testimony or private records of the President or his advisers” as evidence at trial.

“Even if these are conversations about unofficial acts or purely private conduct, the President is having these conversations with official advisers or people who perform an official role in connection with the presidency,” Schaeffer said. “Would intruding on these conversations or allowing these records to be used cause the next president to hesitate before having these kinds of candid conversations with people that they need to rely on in order to execute their duties?”

In addition to prohibiting prosecution for official acts of a president, the Supreme Court’s ruling restricted the use of evidence related to official acts in cases related to a president’s private actions, including limiting evidence and testimony from a president’s advisers.

According to Justin Levitt, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School, the ambiguity of the Supreme Court’s decision about the use of such evidence presents an opportunity for Trump’s lawyers, despite a federal judge already determining that the hush money payment was “purely a personal item of the President.”

“It’s not entirely clear what they meant by the prohibition on the use of evidence,” Levitt said. “For as long and prominent an opinion as it was, it’s not very careful, and so it doesn’t provide a lot of guidance.”

Schaeffer said the second question Merchan will have to consider is, did the jury rely on that evidence and testimony when it reached a guilty verdict?

If Merchan determines that the evidence cited by prosecutors was protected by presidential immunity, he then needs to weigh if the introduction of the evidence at trial was harmless or if it created a “structural error that rendered this trial utterly unfair,” according to Schaeffer.

“I don’t know the answer to that,” said Schaeffer. “I don’t know that anyone does, because I’m not sure that I’ve seen a situation where the Supreme Court has eliminated an entire class of otherwise permissible evidence from a prosecution after a trial has taken place and before sentencing.”

Some experts suggested that the evidence highlighted by Trump in a March pretrial motion — such as tweets about Cohen — were unlikely to have influenced the verdict.

“There’s just a mountain of other evidence that would support the jury’s verdict, so I don’t see it really having any appreciable impact, if any impact, on the New York case,” Pace University School of Law professor Bennett L. Gershman told ABC News.

However, prosecutors themselves placed emphasis on Hicks’ testimony when urging jurors to convict the former president — potentially creating an issue if the testimony is deemed to be protected by immunity.

“She basically burst into tears a few minutes — a few seconds after that because she realized how much this testimony puts the nail in Mr. Trump’s coffin,” Steinglass said in his closing arguments to jurors about Hicks’ testimony.

If Merchan opts to set aside the verdict, he could order a new trial without any of the contested evidence related to official acts, according to Levitt.

Israel prepares for possible war with Hezbollah as Hamas conflict drags on

July 3, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(TEL AVIV, Israel) — The Israeli military is preparing a phased pullout from Gaza and quietly pressing the government to broker a truce with Hamas as quickly as possible, as the military works to clear the decks ahead of what officials say could be a withering war with the powerful Iranian-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah.

One Israeli official said Tuesday that if the barometer is destroying Hamas’s pre-war capabilities — which included clearly designated battalions with sophisticated coordination and communications — and removing Hamas from Gaza’s government, then Israel has already achieved that.

Multiple Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have signaled that Israel will begin to draw down forces in Gaza as it enters into what it has called “Phase C” of its war, with a significantly reduced number of troops focusing on what one official described as “fighting Hamas hotspots and hunting high-value targets.”

Another Israeli official conceded to ABC News that “Hamas still has a large influence over what’s taking place in Gaza – that’s the main thing. We need to try to create an alternative.”

Israel’s own status map, which depicts the fighting condition of all of Hamas’ 24 pre-war battalions, designates one of the battalions in Rafah as green, which means operational, and another as orange, which is semi-operational.

Hamas’ continued influence in Gaza has not fully mitigated lawlessness there, with European and Israeli officials warning for months that the Gaza Strip could turn into “Mogadishu on the Mediterranean,” a reference to the decades of internecine fighting and instability in Somalia’s capital.

In high-level meetings in Washington last week, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin discussed potential “day after” plans for Gaza, according to four U.S. and Israeli officials who spoke to ABC News.

One of the plans would comprise an international “board of directors” that U.S. officials are likening to a steering committee of nations that would include the UAE, Egypt, and possibly Jordan. Morocco would send peacekeepers to Gaza, with the U.S. somehow providing general oversight and command and control. The response from Arab states to the proposal has been lukewarm, a senior official with direct knowledge of the situation told ABC News.

The “board of directors” would be coupled with a new a “bottom up” force that the U.S. would train and that would include contingents from the Palestinian Authority to lend it legitimacy, though not so many Palestinian contingents that Netanyahu, who has publicly dismissed any Palestinian Authority role in a future Gaza, would reject the plan, a senior Israeli official told ABC News.

The training of the Palestinian force in Gaza would be supervised by U.S. Lt. Gen. Michael Fenzel, United States Security Coordinator of the Israel-Palestinian Authority who is based in Jerusalem. These units would begin to operate in small enclaves in Gaza.

Officials said it remains doubtful that these kinds of alternatives could be stood up quickly, which would potentially leave Hamas to control the power vacuum in Gaza. But a group of top Israeli officials interviewed this week said crushing an already debilitated Hamas, currently capable only of small-scale attacks on Israel, should be sidelined in favor of countering Hezbollah, which poses an existential threat to the state.

To that end, the officials said, Israel should muster forces and conserve ammunition for an impending confrontation with Hezbollah, which has boasted of tens of thousands of Iranian-trained fighters, many of them seasoned from fighting in Syria’s civil war, and further thousands of missiles and rockets that could well overwhelm Israel’s air defenses.

The Israeli officials said Israel has sufficient offensive munitions for a war with Hezbollah, but could use more from the U.S.

Hezbollah said it began its cross-border war with Israel on Oct. 8, following the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, out of solidarity with the Palestinians.

Hezbollah has signaled that it wouldn’t agree to the U.S.-brokered cease-fire deal until Israel ends the war in Gaza. The Israeli sources told ABC News that Hamas was stalling on committing to terms on the internationally brokered cease-fire knowing that a potential war with Hezbollah would significantly weaken Israel.

The larger issue is that regardless of the approach, it will take time, which is working against the process, U.S. and Israeli officials say, but is working in favor of Hamas. Multiple, multi-day operations in which Israel has reentered areas it cleared months ago and where Hamas has since regrouped have shown that the terrorist group has slowly and quietly reasserted itself in Gaza.

“Hamas has a large influence over what’s taking place in Gaza and that’s the main reason we need to try to create an alternative,” an Israeli official told ABC News. “You even see that over the effort Hamas has taken to control the looting of aid convoys.”

Right now, Hamas has a head start, and it’s unclear whether an international force can be deployed, or a suitable local force can be trained, before it regains a potentially indomitable level of local control.

Biden blames international travel for poor debate performance, says he nearly ‘fell asleep on stage’

July 3, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — At a campaign fundraiser in McLean, Virginia, on Tuesday evening, President Joe Biden — for the first time — attributed his poor debate performance last week to the amount of foreign travel he did in June, according to notes from a small group of reporters permitted in the event.

“I decided to travel around the world a couple of times,” Biden said, referring to recent trips abroad, including his visit to France for the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

“I didn’t listen to my staff,” he continued, adding he “came back and nearly fell asleep on stage.”

Biden said Tuesday he was sorry for his debate performance but stressed that winning the election was “critical.”

“It’s not an excuse but an explanation,” he continued, adding that the DNC and Biden campaign have raised millions of dollars since debate night.

“I feel good about it,” he said.

Biden’s debate performance last Thursday triggered renewed concern over his age and mental acuity among political observers, including some Democrats who have begun to have discussions about his ability to carry on as their party’s nominee.

The president first addressed his poor debate performance at a North Carolina rally the day after the debate.

“Folks, I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” he told the crowd.

“I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth,” he said to loud cheers from an enthusiastic campaign crowd.

Last Saturday, he also touched on it at a fundraiser at the home of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.

“I didn’t have a great night, but I’m going to be fighting harder,” Biden told attendees of the event.

Earlier on Monday evening, the Biden campaign held a call with more than 500 regional and national finance chairs – who raise money for the campaign and the Democratic Party — during which senior campaign advisers defended Biden’s health and gave assurances he could carry on with his 2024 campaign.

The campaign advisers also noted that a few hundred campaign events in support of Biden took place around the country this past weekend. They also touted the fundraising haul since the debate, people who were on the call told ABC News, with the campaign and the Democratic Party raking in $33 million.

Democratic donors torn as Biden campaign works to calm anxieties

July 3, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — Democratic donors remain torn as the Biden campaign continues to try to calm worries from supporters and party members about the future of President Joe Biden’s reelection bid in the wake of Thursday’s debate performance.

On Monday evening, the Biden campaign held a call with more than 500 regional and national finance chairs — who raise money for the campaign and the Democratic Party — during which senior campaign advisers defended Biden’s health and gave assurances he could carry on with his 2024 campaign.

The call took place amid continued questions about Biden’s ability to fight off former President Donald Trump, especially as the president attempts to galvanize Democratic donors as he entered July with less cash on hand than the Trump campaign.

According to people on the call, senior campaign advisers, including Jen O’Malley Dillon, Quentin Fulks and Molly Murphy, led the conversation, acknowledging it was a bad debate for Biden but stressing he’s still the party’s nominee and that the base is excited.

The campaign advisers also noted that a few hundred campaign events for Biden took place around the country this past weekend and touted the fundraising haul since the debate, people who were on the call told ABC News, with the campaign and the Democratic Party raking in $33 million in the days since.

One source on the call told ABC News, “It was good, honest assessment – no surprising questions nor surprising answers but it was good for them to do.”

But skepticism from donors and fundraisers remains. The first question the campaign fielded on the call was about the 81-year-old president’s stamina, one person on the call told ABC News. Dillon responded, “Biden knows he has to show who he is,” but added, “At the end of the day the president has put out robust medical records,” the person said.

The campaign advisers mostly did not address what the campaign will do if polling indicates a significant reduction in support, people on the call said.

One person on the call told ABC News that he felt there was a lack of responsibility from the campaign on what happened on the debate stage last week, and that people were looking for someone to take on responsibility. Without that, the person said he doesn’t believe Biden’s fundraising can return to normal.

Soon after Thursday night’s debate, influential billionaire donor Reid Hoffman came out in support of Biden in an email to his donor network explaining why others should do so as well.

While acknowledging that Biden’s debate performance “delivered a blow to the mood among donors and organizers,” Hoffman said the debate “revealed nothing new” and that “If we’re musing on Biden’s flaws, we’re not organizing around Trump’s flaws. That’s bad for us and good for them.”

“Being a good President has little to do with being a good debater,” Hoffman wrote.

Donors across the country are divided on how the Democratic Party should move forward, some doubling down on support for Biden with others expressing skepticism.

Major Democratic donor and fundraiser Susie Buell praised Biden as a “great president” and said “he’s a man full of wisdom.”

“If he has a good team around him and he’s still managing, he will be fine … He can do this though. We just have to be there for him,” Buell said.

Susie Buell’s husband and fellow longtime Democratic donor Mark Buell, speaking separately to ABC News, added he believes there’s “plenty of time” to put someone else as the Democratic Party’s nominee, saying the party needs to do a “risk assessment.”

Praising Biden as the “most accomplished” president since Franklin Roosevelt, Mark Buell — who at one point described the president as “diminished” –noted Biden is 81 years old and added, “we thought we’re ready for the next generation and that didn’t happen, and very few people had anything to say in that process because Biden opted to run, he has delegates and he’s home free.”

“It will be data driven to see what horse we’re going to ride to the finish line,” Mark Buell said.

Another Democratic donor, who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak freely, was more critical: “They can bring him to do 20 more speeches. He can’t recover from this.”

Saying he would like to see California Gov. Gavin Newsom as Biden’s replacement, the donor said, “Someone needs to talk to Biden. Obama needs to talk to him. He’s been president two damn times. He can’t stay quiet.”

Some said they’re confused and conflicted — thoughts shifting as every hour passed as news cycles changed.

One California mega donor who had said earlier last weekend, “I am digesting it all. This is tough,” later said: “I really think he should step aside otherwise we lose.”

“I don’t think last night is recoverable. But probably he can’t be convinced so nothing will change and we will keep fighting to the end. A lot can happen between now and Nov maybe we catch a lucky break,” the donor continued.

Ajay Bhutoria, another Democratic donor, maintained it’s a choice between Biden and Trump, saying he tells people, “It was just one night and a president with a cold and sore throat is better than a convicted felon … Compare the presidencies of the two candidates and not just a one night debate.”

Three firefighters injured battling Thompson wildfire in California, Cal Fire says

July 3, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Three firefighters sustained heat-related injuries while battling the Thompson Fire in Butte County, California, as red flag conditions persist in the area, according to Cal Fire.

The state on Tuesday secured federal assistance to support the response to the fire, Gov. Gavin Newsom said.

“We’re working proactively to bring in additional funding to help ensure the availability of vital resources to suppress the fire burning in Butte County,” he said in a statement.

About 13,000 people remain under evacuation order near Oroville, California, the Butte County Sheriff said.

The blaze has burned about 3,002 acres since it was ignited on Tuesday morning, fire officials said. It was zero percent contained, Cal Fire said.

Newsom said California had been approved for a Fire Management Assistance Grant, a federal program that can reimburse up to 75% of eligible firefighting costs.

About 510 fire personnel were battling the “well established” blaze on Tuesday night, Cal Fire said in a fact sheet.

“The fire has jumped the diversion pool of the Feather River and is making runs toward Olive Highway in the Kelly Ridge area,” the agency said.

House explodes in Wisconsin with one man inside

July 3, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(LAFAYETTE, Wis.) — A house in Lafayette, Wisconsin exploded Tuesday afternoon, officials said.

One man who was in the home at the time was taken to the hospital by helicopter, according to Elkhorn Fire Chief Trent Eichmann.

It took 30 to 40 minutes for firefighters to get to the man, who was rescued from the basement of the house.

His identity and condition are not yet known.

According to the man’s family, he was the only person inside the home when it exploded, Walworth County Sheriff Dave Gerber said.

Emergency responders are continuing to search the area for more victims.

Preliminary information suggests that the incident may have been a propane gas explosion, Eichmann said. Since the area is rural, it is not serviced by natural gas.

“I’ve talked to a couple other fire departments locally, and they heard the boom, felt the boom,” Eichmann said.

Officials do not believe there is a continued risk to the area at this time.

Hurricane Beryl forecast and track: Jamaica’s prime minister declares island ‘disaster area’ ahead of storm

July 3, 2024 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — As Hurricane Beryl barrels toward Jamaica, the country’s prime minister, Andrew Holness, pre-emptively declared the entire island a disaster area in an address to the public on Tuesday night.

Holmes also said an island-wide curfew will be in place from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. local time Wednesday.

Although the cyclone has lost some steam as it closes in on Jamaica, it has already caused six deaths in the Caribbean.

According to the National Hurricane Center, Beryl was downgraded to a Category 4 from a Category 5, but its maximum sustained winds remained dangerous at 155 mph.

Beryl is forecast to continue to weaken as it moves through the Caribbean Sea but is still expected to be a major hurricane when it reaches Jamaica on Wednesday.

In anticipation of the storm, Jamaican officials plan to shutter three airports on Tuesday. They will stay closed through Wednesday, and reopening will be announced pending post-storm assessments.

According to the Jamaica Tourist Board, on Tuesday night, Sangster International Airport (Montego Bay) will close at 11:59 p.m., Norman Manley International Airport (Kingston) will close at 10:00 p.m., and Ian Fleming International Airport (Ocho Rios) will close at 7:00 p.m.

The hurricane killed three people in Cariacou in Grenada, where it made landfall on Monday, officials said. Another death from the storm was reported in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and two people were killed in northern Venezuela, officials in those countries said.

Overnight, Hurricane Beryl had strengthened into a Category 5 as it moved through the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea, becoming the strongest July Atlantic hurricane on record.

Earlier Tuesday, Beryl was packing maximum winds of 165 mph. The hurricane surpassed the July record of 160 mph maximum winds produced by Hurricane Emily in 2005, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Hurricane Beryl is expected to reach Jamaica and is forecast to produce rainfall totals of 4 to 8 inches across the mountainous island country, with isolated amounts of up to 12 inches possible. This could trigger flash flooding in vulnerable areas.

The storm was shifting slightly north, taking it on a trajectory that would bring it dangerously close to the coast of Jamaica, possibly Wednesday afternoon or evening, with sustained maximum winds of 130 mph. A storm surge of up to 8 feet is expected, and the hurricane is expected to dump up to a foot of rain.

The outer bands of Beryl could also impact southern portions of the Dominican Republic and Haiti late Tuesday and into Wednesday, potentially causing 2 to 6 inches of rain in those areas.

Residents of St. Vincent and the Grenadines were cleaning up Tuesday and assessing damage. Schools, homes, buildings and farmland sustained extensive hurricane damage, officials said. On Union Island, which is part of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, authorities said 90% of the houses were either destroyed or severely damaged, and the roof of the Union Island airport was ripped off by the hurricane’s buzzsaw-like winds. Heavy damage was also reported at Argyle International Airport on St. Vincent.

The one death reported in the Grenadines occurred on Bequia Island, officials said.

After touring the damaged areas on Tuesday, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves told reporters that Beryl “left in its wake immense destruction.”

Sea surface temperatures in the eastern Caribbean Sea, where Beryl is currently located, are running warmer than average for this time of the year, more in line with where they would be at the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season rather than early July. This is providing ample fuel for Beryl’s extreme intensification.

The latest forecast calls for little change in strength overnight, with a gradual weakening trend commencing on Tuesday as the storm sweeps west-northwestward across the Caribbean Sea.

Beryl will continue to track across the Caribbean Sea throughout the week, closing in on Jamaica on Wednesday, likely weakening to a Category 2 storm by then. The center and worst impacts will likely pass south of the island; however, the latest forecast now has the center of the storm passing a little closer to Jamaica, so more intense rain, wind and storm surge impacts will be possible on the current track.

A weakening trend will continue through the rest of the week as Beryl sweeps across the Caribbean Sea and encounters less favorable atmospheric conditions.

Beryl will then aim for Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula by the end of the week. The current forecast calls for a second landfall sometime on Friday along the eastern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. Beyond that, the system will likely move into the southwestern Gulf of Mexico/Bay of Campeche, continuing to weaken, while taking aim at parts of eastern Mexico next weekend as a tropical storm.

Unfortunately, the same general area of eastern Mexico will likely now see impacts from all three of the first named storms of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season. After being hit by Alberto and Tropical Storm Chris, Beryl will likely bring at least some impacts to the same region by later in the upcoming weekend.

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