Biden cancels public events after testing positive for Covid | First Thing

Pressure rising once again for Biden to step aside in election race after president tested positive for Covid and cancelled events to self-isolate at his home in Delaware. Plus: the power of proprioception

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Good morning.

Tension among Democratic party members rose once again after the White House announced on Wednesday that Joe Biden had tested positive for Covid and would be cancelling events to self-isolate at his home in Delaware.

Who is calling on Biden to step aside? Adam Schiff, the influential US representative from California, is the most well-known lawmaker to publicly say Biden should quit. Meanwhile, CNN is reporting that the former house speaker Nancy Pelosi told Biden that polling showed he could not beat Trump, and ABC News is reporting that Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader and the most senior Democrat in Congress, had told Biden in a meeting on Saturday that it would be better for the country and the Democratic party if the president ended his re-election campaign. A spokesperson for Schumer called the ABC report idle speculation".

David Axelrod called voters' concern about Biden's age a legitimate concern". Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama, spoke to the Guardian in Milwaukee about Biden's chances of re-election. It's a very hard case to make that anyone should be elected president in the United States at the age of 82, not for political reasons but for actuarial reasons," Axelrod said. This is the hardest job on the planet. It takes a lot out of you. It's a legitimate concern that people have and that concern has been intensified by what happened at the debate. I don't think anything that's happened has relieved that concern."

Are any Democrats calling on Biden to stay in the race? In Milwaukee, Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and a party grandee, said Biden would be confirmed as the Democratic nominee by virtual vote between 1 and 7 August, before the Chicago convention. The former White House chief of staff Ron Klain said: Based on working in two campaigns against Trump I am unchanged in my view that Joe Biden is uniquely capable of defeating him - that's my gut view based on experience."

What does Biden say? Biden has repeatedly said he is up to the job, telling one interviewer he will be the nominee unless I get hit by a train". On Wednesday, his social media team posted a tongue-in-cheek message on X about his Covid status.