Joe Biden’s days on the ballot may be numbered, according to Axios, amid a pressure campaign by top Democrats to convince the president to drop out of the race before it’s too late. The outlet says Biden could leave the ticket as soon as this weekend.
Close friends and top party congressional leaders have publicly and privately called for the 81-year-old to drop out of his reelection bid for weeks, following Biden’s abysmal performance during his debate with presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
In the weeks that followed, Biden has been plagued by unfavorable polls, intense scrutiny, and a growing list of blunders and moments of confusion. Citing those concerns as detrimental to his viability, as well as to the party’s congressional campaigns, top Democrats have pushed Biden to withdraw — and believe he may do so as early as this weekend, per Axios.
It’s not just Democratic leaders: His friends and key donors don’t like his chances, either. They’ve told Biden, who is now in isolation after contracting Covid-19 again, that they believe Trump will win in a landslide should he stay in the race.
“His choice is to be one of history’s heroes, or to be sure of the fact that there’ll never be a Biden presidential library,” a close friend told Axios. “I pray that he does the right thing. He’s headed that way.”
Biden’s ability to deliver a congressional majority seems to be the top concern for Democrats. Over the weekend, it was reported Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had a blunt one-on-one talk with Biden telling him to drop out soon. His office told ABC News, “Leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus.”
The House side is no different. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) met with Biden in private last week, where “he directly expressed the full breadth of insight, perspective and conclusions reached about the path forward” that his Democratic colleagues shared, read a statement released by his office.
“The president told both leaders he is the nominee of the party, he plans to win, and looks forward to working with both of them to pass his 100 days agenda to help working families,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said on Monday, but it seems that Biden has become more receptive to the requests, asking if Vice President Kamala Harris can win, according to CNN.
House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also had a private chat with Biden, telling him he wouldn’t stand a chance against Trump, and that he could wreak further havoc on Democrats’ changes in the House should he stay on the ballot, and he could dissuade further donations to Democratic campaigns. Biden reportedly fired back at Pelosi, telling her polls showed he could win, with a source telling CNN that Pelosi asked to get Biden’s longtime advisor Mike Donilon on the phone to talk numbers.
Although it’s unclear if Pelosi called on Biden to drop out, she said last week, “It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We’re all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short.”
Former President Barack Obama has been telling allies that Biden should reconsider his candidacy, based on concerns about Biden’s legacy, The Washington Post reported.
Close to two-thirds of Democrats want Biden to bow out of the race according to an Associated Press poll released on Wednesday. An Emerson College poll released on Thursday shows Trump significantly leading Biden in seven swing states.
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Donald Trump speaks in front of the American flag at the White House, on May 12, 2026.
It’s the Corruption, Stupid
Let’s say it plainly: There has never been a president as corrupt as Donald Trump. There is no close second in our history.
Take two days in May as Exhibit A. Americans just found out that in the first quarter of this year, Trump’s stock portfolio made 3,600 trades — an average of nearly 60 a day. This is a rapacious pace that would make a day trader on meth blush. Many of these appear suspiciously timed to benefit from actions approved by the president himself. For example, his Nvidia stock surged after Trump announced the company would be permitted to sell its cutting-edge AI chips to China. Similar suspiciously well-timed calls were made ahead of big government moves involving other companies, from Intel to Palantir to Boeing. The Trump Organization says all trades are made by a third-party investment advisor. If so, they appear to be psychic.
But the apparent insider trading scam being run from within the Oval Office is small change — merely millions of dollars — compared to the self-dealing plunder of $1.8 billion tax-payer dollars being pushed through the DOJ and IRS.
There’s never been a sitting president who sued his own government for $10 billion. That’s because it’s absurdly corrupt. But that’s what Donald Trump did, arguing he had suffered damages from prosecutions pursued before he was reelected. Trump, like many of his supporters, persistently confuses persecution with prosecution.
The judge who heard the case convened an independent panel to review the suit, suspecting it might be a scam. Before the case could be dismissed, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — who had previously served as Trump’s personal lawyer — declared that the bogus suit would be preemptively settled, not for $10 billion, but for the symbolic sum of $1.776 billion, which Trump said will be distributed to persecuted political allies.
This is a shakedown. The president is compelling a Justice Department he controls to redirect money from taxpayers — that’s you — to his most fervent supporters. This slush fund will set off a cash grab among MAGA lawyers and be used to reward partisan fanatics who attacked the U.S. Capitol — and police officers — on his behalf.
If that wasn’t enough of a blatantly illegal use of presidential power, it was revealed that the “settlement” deal included a pledge signed by the acting attorney general that would ensure — in the hysterical all caps of a Trump tweet — that the government would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing” any tax claims, audits or related prosecutions against Trump, his family or their businesses. This is an attempt to get a permanent get-out-of-jail-free card for the Trump family — a license to steal.
All of this is insane. All of it is unethical, and much of it is illegal and impeachable — but our system was not designed to deal with a shamelessly self-dealing president, a spineless Republican Congress, and a complaint conservative Supreme Court that has refused to enforce the emoluments clause of the Constitution and ruled that Trump has immunity for actions he takes as president. That ruling may prove to be the most consequential — and most corrosive — act of judicial abdication in American history. Against this partisan-group think, individual acts of courage matter. So kudos to the top lawyer at the Treasury Department, Brian Morrissey, who at least had the integrity to resign rather than oversee this tax-payer funded plunder.
Just to close out the corruption-palooza, Trump announced that he would endorse the Lone Star State poster-boy of corruption, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, in his primary against incumbent GOP Senator John Cornyn. Paxton’s scandals include a truly buffoonish array of fraud and bribery charges that resulted in him nearly being impeached by the state legislature. But corruption is a feature, not a bug, of Trumpland.All this smacks of late Rome and you’d be forgiven for half expecting Trump will next appoint a horse to an open Cabinet position, with Republicans rationalizing the need for more equine representation. It is no more absurd that the cavalcade of Trump appointees refusing to say that Biden won the 2020 election during their confirmation hearings in the Senate. The decision to parrot unreality for partisan gain defines deviancy down.
But in the search for something hopeful to hold onto in dark times, you can find some comfort in the fact that corruption is often the thing that turns the tide against authoritarian-adjacent administrations. And there is evidence this is happening.
Trump’s billions in self-enrichment, his reflexive twisting of U.S. policy to sell out long-term national interests and enduring values, comes at a moment when nearly half of Americans say they are feeling extremely anxious about their own financial situation.
That anxiety is driven by the widening gap between Main Street and Wall Street, a gap set on fire by a trade war and a real war Trump started, which has no end in sight but promises to further raise energy prices, fertilizer prices, and strangle the global economy. While CEOs embrace the transactional nature of this president, kissing his ring and offering vigs, the situation is grim if you’re not lining up at the Trump trough. At a time when the super-rich are getting richer, everyone else is told to go to hell by the man in the White House.
These are precisely the kinds of conditions that turn people against an aging, autocratic president who shows contempt for the very people who put him in office. It is not just that Trump’s approval numbers have plummeted to the point where two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the job he is doing. It is that Trump, for the first time, is opposed by a majority of non-college-educated white voters — a.k.a. his base — and they feel betrayed because Trump is raking in billions of dollars while they struggle to pay rent and buy groceries. Trump has dismissed and discounted their concerns, turning a blind eye to the anger about rising costs that carried him back into the presidency.
Trump’s aim is to make his thievery so blatant that we collectively become numb to it and disfigure our democracy in the process. Once upon a time conservatives warned about the dangers of “crony capitalism” and corruption. Now they are silent and complicit. It is the temporary triumph of partisanship over principle. Patriotism demands that we reassert the basic American idea that no man is above the law and that our presidents are not kings.