How to watch President Biden’s speech tonight on dropping out of the 2024 race
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden will deliver an Oval Office address on Wednesday night on his decision not to seek reelection and how he plans to finish his tenure as commander in chief.
What time is President Biden’s address from the Oval Office?
Biden said he will speak “on what lies ahead, and how I will finish the job for the American people” at 8 p.m. ET.
How to watch or livestream Biden’s address
ABC News Live will carry the network’s special report on the president’s speech.
The White House is also expected to stream the remarks live on their website and on YouTube.
It will be Biden’s first extensive, on-camera comments on his decision to step away from the 2024 campaign trail and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris.
The president first announced he would “stand down” from the race and focus his attention on the remaining six months of his term in a letter posted to social media on Sunday.
In the letter, addressed to his “fellow Americans,” Biden said it was the “greatest honor of my life to serve as your President.”
While he said his in-depth remarks on his decision would come later, Biden expressed his “deepest gratitude to all those who have worked so hard to see me reelected.”
“I want to thank Vice President Kamala Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work,” he wrote. “And let me express my heartfelt appreciation to the American people for the faith and trust you have placed in me. I believe today what I always have: that there is nothing America can’t do — when we do it together. We just have to remember we are the United States of America.”
Biden’s decision to drop out of the race came after weeks of intense scrutiny from fellow Democrats about his ability to campaign and serve a second term after his poor debate performance against Donald Trump in June.
Biden was initially defiant, insisting he would stay the course and that only the “Lord Almighty” could tell him to step aside in the 2024 race.
But after a drumbeat of Democrats publicly called on him to step aside from his reelection bid, and other prominent leaders like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries privately suggesting he do so, Biden made the decision to bow out.
Biden went on to endorse Harris to take his place atop the ticket.
“My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President,” he wrote in another social media post on Sunday. “And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”
(PHILADELPHIA) — Less than an hour after the ABC News presidential debate ended Tuesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign called for another matchup, laying down a challenge to former President Donald Trump.
The campaign put out an email touting her performance at the debate and blasting Trump for his responses and demeanor.
The email ended with a direct question to the former president.
“Under the bright lights, the American people got to see the choice they will face this fall at the ballot box: between moving forward with Kamala Harris, or going backwards with Trump. That’s what they saw tonight and what they should see at a second debate in October. Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?” the email stated.
Trump responded personally — in an unusual visit to the “spin room” with reporters afterward.
“They want another debate because they lost,” he said. “So, we’ll, you know, think about that.”
Trump later appeared less inclined to participate, telling Fox News’ Sean Hannity, “I sort of think maybe I shouldn’t do it.”
“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “I have to think about it, but if you won the debate, I sort of think maybe I shouldn’t do it. Why should I do another debate? She immediately said, ‘We want another.’ That’s, you know, what happens when you lose you immediately want to do a rematch.”
Still, he kept it open without shutting it down completely, saying “let’s see what happens.”
“I am not inclined to do it because I won the debate by a lot. But I think we let it settle in, and let’s see what happens,” Trump said.
After remaining noncommittal to a second debate with Harris, Trump once again said it was only because Harris felt like she lost the debate last night.
“When two fighters fight and one loses, the first thing they do is ask for a debate, or they asked for a fight. So in this case, the debate. So we had two people. They lost very badly. The first thing they did is ask for a debate, because that’s what when a fighter loses, he says, I want a rematch. I want a rematch,” he said.
“Look, I’ve been told I’m a good debater. I think it was one of my better debates, maybe my best debate,” touted Trump who then started criticizing aspects of the debate he felt were unfair.
A second presidential debate has not been announced.
The vice presidential candidates are scheduled to debate on Oct. 1.
(HOWELL, Mich.) — Former President Donald Trump continued his Democratic National Convention counterprogramming week in Howell, Michigan, on Tuesday, for a speech that was supposed to be dedicated to crime and safety, but one in which he repeatedly criticized Vice President Kamala Harris’ record as a prosecutor while once again reaffirming his support for police.
“We’re here today to talk about how we are going to stop the Kamala crime wave that is going on at levels that nobody has ever seen before. And she is, as you know, the most radical left person ever even thought of for high office, certainly for the office of president. People don’t know the real Kamala, but I do,” said Trump as law enforcement officials stood behind him.
However, once again, an unfocused Trump failed to advocate for certain, specific policy reforms he was supposed to call for during his remarks.
According to speech experts obtained by ABC News before Trump delivered his remarks, the former president was supposed to call for the death penalty for child rapists and child traffickers, advocate for stop-and-frisk policies, as well as making “it a felony for any medical professional to perform surgery on a minor without parental consent.”
Throughout his remarks, without providing evidence, Trump painted a dangerous picture of what America would look like should the Harris-Walz ticket be elected whereas he would create a “crime-free America,” he argued.
“Mothers will no longer be losing their children because of weak, liberal policies and politicians that have given up on securing a crime free America. We want a crime-free America. We’re going to stop violent crime in the United States. And it’s people like this that can do the job better than anybody. They do the job justly and fairly,” said Trump praising the law enforcement officials nearby.
As Trump ticked through crime statistics, the FBI says that, for the first quarter of 2024, compared to the same period of 2023, violent crime decreased by 15.2 %. Murder decreased by 26.4%, rape decreased by 25.7%, robbery decreased by 17.8%, and aggravated assault decreased by 12.5%.
The former president accused Harris of not trying to fight crime in the United States, latching on to previous comments she made about police funding to argue that, as president, she would work to “defund the police.”
“She wants to destroy policemen in general, and they ruin your lives, your jobs, and they ruin everything you’ve lived for, everything you’ve felt that you want to make great,” Trump said talking to the sheriffs. “You want to make our country great. When I’m president of the United States again, we will never even think about or mention the words defund the police.”
In a series of interviews conducted in the midst of widespread demonstrations around the nation following the murder of George Floyd where there was an uptick in demands for police reform, Harris occasionally expressed support for some of the principles underlying the “defund the police” movement and advocated for a “reimagining” of policing nationwide.
Harris campaign spokesperson James Singer previously told ABC News Harris has “supported increased funding to keep our communities safe and hold convicted felons like Trump accountable — which is why America is currently seeing a near 50-year low in violent crime.”
Trump also highlighted Harris’s support of abolishing cash bail, arguing it led to an uptick in crime before drawing a connection between the protestors arrested during the murder of George Floud and then Jan 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a Trump-led mob.
“When the violent mobs of looters and anarchists tried to burn down Minneapolis in 2020, Kamala Harris raised money for bail to bail out the arsonists and the rioters and the killers. People were killed. Many people were killed,” said Trump.
“Compare that to J6, nobody was killed. Nobody was killed. They weren’t fires set. They burned down the city. They were burning down Minneapolis. And she went out. And not only did she work a little bit with them, she worked a lot with them. She worked to get them out and to make them– to set them free,” Trump falsely claimed, as people were killed on Jan 6.
As protests broke out in Minnesota at the time, Harris asked her backers to “chip in” to a bail fund to support anyone arrested after bond on the social networking platform Twitter, which is now known as X, a post that Republican have repeatedly cited in their attacks.
On Tuesday, Trump promised to “make a record investment in hiring, retention, and training of police officers,” going on to accuse Democrats of not looking out for the livelihood of officers.
At one point while praising Michigan law enforcement, Trump said he would love to have them working during the election in “different territories of your state” to keep things “under control” like the officers do in their home area.
“I don’t want to say any particular names of locations, but I can think of a big one in this state. I’d love to have them working there during the election, I can tell you.”
The former president said he wouldn’t specifically name areas but throughout the campaign cycle he has continually criticized voting procedures in heavily-Democratic areas such as Detroit.
Trump’s visit to Howell has drawn criticism from the Harris campaign capitalizing on reports of demonstrations last month in the city during which masked individuals marched through downtown chanting “We love Hitler. We love Trump,” according to local newspaper Livingston Daily.
The march took place the same day Trump was campaigning in Grand Rapids, just 100 miles west of Howell, with two demonstrations taking place with at least a dozen individuals gathered waving flags with a swastika, the term “KKK” and other antisemitic messaging, and chanting “Heil Hitler,” Livingston Daily reported.
But Trump isn’t the only presidential candidate to campaign in Howell. Notably, President Joe Biden also visited the town to talk about infrastructure in 2021.
On Wednesday, as Trump was wrapping up his speech, a reporter asked him what his response was to criticism he has garnered for hosting a campaign rally in Howell, to which Trump quipped: Who was here in 2021?”
“Joe Biden,” the reporter responded, earning a laugh from Trump who then walked away.
The Harris campaign criticized Trump for not outright condemning the demonstrators.
“Today, Donald Trump refused to condemn white supremacists who marched in his name,” said Harris-Walz Spokesperson Sarafina Chitika in a statement to ABC News. “Donald Trump can’t bring us together so he tries to drive us apart. The American people will reject his failed leadership and divisive agenda this November.”
Livingston County, where Howell is located, is one of very few counties surrounding the liberal Detroit metropolitan area that has constantly remained Republican in recent elections.
As some of the nearby counties in southeast Michigan gradually turned red over the years, Livingston became more and more solidly Republican, with Trump winning the county with more than 60% of votes both in 2016 and 2020.
Howell, which reports a white population of roughly 96%, well over Michigan’s white population of 73%, has had a “complicated history” with race, the Livingston Daily reported last month.
The local paper detailed the town’s history of various racial tensions stemming from the 1800s up to this year, including infamous local Ku Klux Klan member Robert Miles’ violent rallies and demonstrations in the 1960s and 70s to repeated racial allegations that have surfaced in town in recent years.
(NEW YORK) — In a new report released as students return to campus, a Columbia University antisemitism task force has found the school failed to stop hate on campus and has not treated Jewish student concerns “with the standards of civility, respect, and fairness it promises,” calling the problem “serious” and “pervasive.”
Additionally, the task force of faculty members at the New York City school recommends a new definition of anti-Jewish hate, concluding, in part, that “celebrating violence against Jews or Israelis and discriminating against them based on their ties to Israel” constitutes antisemitism.
It comes as House Republicans in Washington have requested Columbia and other colleges and universities provide detailed plans on how they will deal with pro-Palestinian demonstrations that the GOP lawmakers say caused “antisemitic chaos” and disrupted the previous academic year.
Unrest broke out this past spring at Columbia and schools across the country, with students setting up encampments and clashing with police, disrupting classes and graduations as they protested against Israel’s invasion of Gaza after the Hamas terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
The Columbia task force said it heard testimonials from hundreds of Jewish and other students.
“These student stories are heartbreaking, and make clear that the University has an obligation to act,” its report said.
The task force said many Jewish and Israeli students “were on the receiving end of ethnic slurs, stereotypes about supposedly dangerous Israeli veterans, antisemitic tropes about Jewish wealth and hidden power, threats and physical assaults, exclusion of Zionists from student groups, and inconsistent standards. We propose this definition for use in training and education, not for discipline or as a means for limiting free speech or academic freedom.”
The report continued, “Specifically, we recommend anti-bias and inclusion trainings for students, resident advisers, resident assistants, teaching assistants, student-facing staff, and faculty. In a community dedicated to freedom of speech and pluralism, we must prepare students with different views and backgrounds to engage with each other. We must encourage mutual respect, tolerance, civility, and an open learning environment.”
In an Aug. 23 memo to students obtained by ABC News, interim President Katrina Armstrong said the school recently established an Office of Institutional Equity to redouble its commitment to addressing discrimination and harassment on campus, including alleged Title VI violations. The office will streamline any violations to ensure they’re handled fairly, according to Armstrong.
“Redoubling our commitment to addressing discrimination and harassment and the toll they take will be essential going forward,” Armstrong wrote, adding, “Effectively managing protests and demonstrations allows us to advance our educational and research missions while enabling free speech and debate.”
The letters from the Republican chairs of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Education and the Workforce Committee ask “what policies, procedures, and concrete measures your University will be implementing to prevent a reoccurrence of the anti-Semitic chaos that swept across America’s campuses last school year.”
“These disruptions are likely to return to campuses this fall and you [the schools’ leadership] must be prepared to act,” Reps. Jason Smith and Virginia Foxx, respectively, wrote to 10 universities, asking for responses by Sept. 5.
Columbia student Eden Yadegar was a guest of Foxx during Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress in July and spoke at a roundtable on Capitol Hill in February, detailing how she said she was followed around campus by protesters brandishing sticks.
“At this point ignoring Jewish students is a characteristic of the administration not just a transient issue,” Yadegar told ABC News after the task force report was released. “And if they won’t even listen to us, I don’t see how they plan on fixing the issues directly affecting us every single day.”
The latest such disruptions include a pro-Palestinian organization at the University of Michigan, which held a ‘die-in’ demonstration on campus this week, according to the Michigan Daily.
Michigan President Santa Ono sat down for a transcribed interview before Foxx’s committee earlier this month. The university’s student government was shut down by pro-Palestine activists at the start of the new school year, according to the report.
In Ono’s welcome message to the Michigan community, he said protest is embraced and celebrated at the school so long as it doesn’t endanger or disrupt the operations of the university.
Other schools, including the University of Central Florida (UCF), will vote on how to tighten protest restrictions later in September, according to a UCF notice of proposed regulation amendment. The university didn’t see massive protest encampments last school year but there were noticeable demonstrations at its graduation ceremonies.
The House Republican letters to schools come amid a congressional probe the GOP says is aimed at rooting out antisemitism on college campuses, a drive now led by House Speaker Mike Johnson.
This spring, Johnson broadened the jurisdiction of six Republican-led committees by sending letters to the 10 schools that the Ways and Means and Education committees were already investigating. Smith and Foxx’s investigations include elite institutions such as MIT and Harvard as well as Columbia. An MIT spokesperson said the school is reviewing the request.
In contrast, the former chairman of the Education committee, Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott, sent an open letter to colleges in his southeastern Virginia congressional district on Friday. He told ABC News that his letter was meant to notify schools of the resources available to them through the federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
“Campuses should be prepared for whatever might happen to make sure they’re not in violation of constitutional rights for freedom of speech or Title VI,” Scott said.
“It is a violation of Title VI to allow a hostile racial or ethnic environment. You also have to have freedom of speech, and sometimes these are in conflict,” he said, adding, “There are resources available at the Department of Education to help people balance these.”
Scott has criticized the GOP investigations into antisemitism on college campuses because he said Republicans don’t raise the same concerns about Islamophobia.
“The only way you can effectively deal with antisemitism is to address all forms of hate and discrimination, and we [the committee] have aggressively ignored everything else,” Scott told ABC News.
In December, House Republican Conference Chair and Education Committee member Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., pressed the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT at a hearing on alleged antisemitic conduct at their institutions. Stefanik called their testimony “morally bankrupt” and demanded their resignations. Harvard President Claudine Gay and Penn President Liz Magill resigned not long afterward.
Earlier this year, the Education committee sent subpoenas to Harvard for failing to produce “priority documents” related to the monthslong congressional antisemitism probe.
In August, after Columbia University President Minouche Shafik resigned, Foxx subpoenaed Columbia for failing to turn over “necessary” documents to her committee.
Shafik wrote in her resignation announcement that her stepping down would allow Columbia to better deal with future challenges.
“Even as tension, division, and politicization have disrupted our campus over the last year, our core mission and values endure and will continue to guide us in meeting the challenges ahead,” she wrote.