A true Washington psychodrama will unfold today a mile from the White House, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

• A red-hot press corps — which feels ignored, used and deceived — will get its first true unfiltered crack at grilling President Biden, the most media-sheltered president of modern times. "The dogs are loose," a Biden adviser told us.
• Biden, bitter over media coverage of his age and acuity, gets his shot at redemption — a chance to show the press and public he can think fast, handle the heat, and spar and speak improvisationally without glitching.

Why it matters: The stakes are even higher than during the first presidential debate. If Biden looks weak and wobbly, his Democratic critics will pounce and crank up resignation calls. If he looks strong and steady, the anti-Biden campaign could stall.

• Biden's every word and move will be dissected, every mangled sentence scrutinized, every stiff move or mind freeze discussed.

🖼️ The big picture: Senior Democrats are increasingly bearish about the chances Biden stays at the top of the ticket. "I think this weekend is critical," said a former top government official. "I expect key conversations to happen at the end of the week after NATO. But the reality is setting in. The numbers are bad. The money is frozen. The path isn't there."

• A top Democratic operative said of today's press conference: "If he performs well, it still doesn't put it to rest. He's got to do that over and over and over. That's the problem for him."
• Another former official said: "If he does push-ups on stage, it doesn't matter" — the damage was done when 50+ million saw the debate.

🤔 The intrigue: Don't underestimate reporters' bitterness at this White House.

• A natural tension always exists. But this is different: Biden has operated in a protective bubble, often hermetically sealed from tough questioning. Many reporters believe the White House hid signs of Biden's aging, and played them or badgered them when they did push on the topic.
• Many are being harassed on social media for being too soft on Biden. In our experience, most reporters are more insecure than people think, and highly sensitive to how friends and foes see them, especially on X.

This helps explain the recent eruptions by correspondents at the daily on-camera press briefings. (In this archaic ritual, reporters sit with their competitors and share what's on their minds, in return for predictable talking points. But we digress.)

• Post-debate, reporters have been much more combative and skeptical. This will uncork at 5:30 p.m. ET today at Biden's first real "big boy" press conference in — well, forever. It'll come after a fairly long day of work at the NATO summit.

Column continues below.

President Biden has a love-hate relationship with the media. He loves the gang on "Morning Joe" and right now hates The New York Times, which has covered his post-debate mess aggressively, Jim and Mike write.

• The New York Times Opinion section has been relentless on Biden: two unsigned editorials + multiple columns by Tom Friedman and Nick Kristoff (again!), and opinion pieces by George Clooney and James Carville. All have been blunt, some brutal. The Biden White House has been apoplectic about it.

🔎 Between the lines: Truth is, White House aides shielded Biden from tough questioning until tonight, because they feared a moment like the last debate. He rarely faces tough questioning in public. So some aides are deeply worried about his capacity to pull this off. They know he could make matters worse. A debate-like performance might end things.

• Like the debate, this is a time, venue and risk of the White House's choosing. Despite promising more improvisational moments to validate his fitness and lucidity, Biden has done one such event post-debate. The rest is all choreography.
• Biden pretended to do free-flowing interviews with friendly Black radio hosts over the weekend — only to get busted for feeding them pre-written questions. One radio host lost her job for taking the bait.

The other side: White House officials point to Biden's 47 interviews this year (one-third Donald Trump's rate for interviews and pressers at this point in office). Biden will do an interview in Austin on Monday with NBC's Lester Holt — airing as a prime-time special at 9 p.m. ET, counterprogramming the opening night of the Republican convention.

• Biden aides savored a pre-debate Media Matters for America tally saying "five of the top US newspapers have published nearly 10 times as many articles focused just on Biden's age or mental acuity as focused on just Trump's."

🗞️ David E. Sanger — White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times, and author of this spring's "New Cold Wars" — tells us the press-government tension is healthy. "If your ideal is placid, agreeable press conferences," he said, "the Kremlin and Chinese foreign ministry run them daily."

• But Sanger said the White House "deflected for months, or years, questions about the president's health and diagnoses ... The question is whether the president can win back the lost confidence. I don't know. But what I would seek as a White House reporter would be evidence that the president has been exhaustively tested and all relevant information has been fully disclosed."

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• Go deeper: "Rift between press and Biden team deepens over age story," by Axios' Sara Fischer.

Two weeks into Democrats' post-debate meltdown, pressure on President Biden is once again soaring because of cryptic statements from Democratic leaders and a scorching op-ed from a top Hollywood fundraiser, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

• Why it matters: The drop-Biden rebellion had weakened after the president defiantly refused to stand down. Now, it's gaining momentum — with an intervention by George Clooney threatening to blow the doors wide open.

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi shook Congress yesterday by saying she's waiting for Biden to make a final decision on running — despite Biden insisting, time and again, that he's in.

• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is privately signaling to donors that he's open to a ticket that isn't led by Biden.

💥 Clooney — who just last month headlined the largest fundraiser in Democratic Party history with Biden in attendance — delivered a piercing blow to the heart of Biden's defense about his shaky debate performance.

• "It's devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser was not the Joe 'big F-ing deal' Biden of 2010," Clooney wrote in the N.Y. Times yesterday. "He wasn't even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate." (Read his piece.)

🔭 Zoom out: Clooney's words were unsparing. But other, more subtle signals from top Democrats yesterday seemed to confirm his message about their private angst.

• Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and others echoed Pelosi's language about waiting for Biden to make a decision — a clear sign that they don't consider the matter to be closed.
• Welch ended the day becoming the first Senate Democrat to call for Biden to drop out, joining eight House Democrats.
• Keep reading.

🌐 This morning's lead stories:

• CNN: "Biden's political position is rapidly deteriorating;"
• BBC: "Biden's bruising day sinks hopes Democrats will move on."

House Democrats with grave concerns about President Biden's ability to win are looking to Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who remains in Congress, as their potential muscle to get him to drop out, Axios' Andrew Solender writes.

• Why it matters: "She's the f***ing power broker," a House Democrat said. "She's the hatchet."

👓 Zoom in: Congressional Democrats who had been on the back foot and feeling resigned to Biden as the nominee took Pelosi's comments on "Morning Joe" yesterday as an invitation to turn the spigot back on.

• Lawmakers tell Axios to expect more where that came from. "I told my comms team," a House Democrat told us, "have our statement ready to go next time he has a big f***-up, because you know there's going to be another one."

Keep reading.

Just 13% of workers in the U.S. are now earning less than $15 an hour. Two years ago, that number was 31.9%, Axios' Emily Peck writes from new data by Oxfam.

• Why it matters: Even accounting for inflation — $15 an hour in 2024 has the same buying power as about $14 in 2022 — this is remarkable progress.

The boost is meaningful for the millions of Americans who need (and typically spend) every additional dollar they earn.

• Get Axios Markets.

Editor's note: This item has been corrected to show Emily Peck, not Felix Salmon, as the author.

Three top prosecutors from the Mueller investigation will be out Sept. 24 with a book telling the inside story of "the most intense investigation of Trump's Presidency."

• "Interference" — by Aaron Zebley, James Quarles and Andrew Goldstein — "completes and corrects the historical record," the publisher says in the announcement.

Why it matters: The book, which includes an introduction by Robert Mueller, takes on new meaning after the Supreme Court dramatically limited what presidential actions can be prosecuted.

• More on the book.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner — The New York Times Magazine's star profile writer — writes in this week's cover story about a family friend's kidnapping that inspired her new novel, "Long Island Compromise":

"Jack was home safe. He had survived his kidnapping. But the actual kidnapping is not what this story is about, if you can believe it. It's about surviving what you survived, which is also known as the rest of your life."

Read the story (gift link — no subscription required).

Costco is raising its membership fees for the first time since 2017, Axios' Nathan Bomey and Kelly Tyko write.

• Why it matters: The wholesale club had kept its fees steady despite inflation, aiming to maintain its reputation for value.

Gold Star and business membership fees will increase from $60 to $65 beginning Sept. 1.

• Annual fees for executive memberships, which include a 2% reward on purchases, will increase by $10 from $120 to $130.

Keep reading.