Pummeled by a positive COVID test and a rapidly imploding re-election campaign, President Biden walked gingerly up the steps of Air Force One and retreated into self-isolation last night, Axios' Zachary Basu and Hans Nichols write.

• Why it matters: Biden will spend the next few days surveying the political wreckage from his home in Delaware, with his fate as the Democratic nominee more uncertain than at any point in the last three weeks.

After a brief pause to acknowledge the shocking violence of former President Trump's assassination attempt, Democratic pressure on Biden to exit the race has reached fever pitch.

• Adding insult to injury, Trump — feted as a martyr in Milwaukee — will deliver his nomination speech at a raucous and remarkably united Republican National Convention tonight.

🖼️ The big picture: Only a handful of Democrats have the influence to persuade Biden to quit — starting with Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

• In at least one conversation since the debate, Pelosi conveyed to Biden and his campaign the political peril that Democrats face if he remains atop the ticket.
• Schumer had a "blunt one-on-one conversation" with Biden on Saturday, in which Schumer "forcefully made the case that it would be best if Biden bowed out of the race," ABC News' Jon Karl reported.

The intrigue: Those interventions came last week, but didn't leak out until yesterday.

• Late last night, The New York Times reported that Biden "has become more receptive" to hearing arguments about why he should drop out — even asking questions about how Vice President Harris could win.

🔎 Zoom in: The first signs of yesterday's runaway rebellion came via a statement from Rep. Adam Schiff, a top Pelosi ally poised to be the next senator from California, calling for Biden to drop out.

• Then came news the Democratic National Committee is delaying its plan to nominate Biden in a virtual roll call weeks before the Aug. 19 convention, following backlash from rank-and-file Democrats who want more time to address concerns about the president's age.
• Semafor reported that Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-chair of the Biden campaign, privately told the president in Las Vegas yesterday that donor cash is drying up.
• House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has conveyed his own private warning to Biden, as many of his Democratic members have expressed fears of the down-ballot impacts of a Trump landslide.

👀 What to watch: Amid weeks of bad polling for Biden, AP-NORC dropped this bomb: 65% of Democrats believe the president should withdraw from the race and let the party pick a new nominee.

• The financial path forward will also be one of the key considerations Biden ponders as he remains isolated — both politically and physically.

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MILWAUKEE — Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), the vice-presidential nominee, introduced himself to America last night by recounting his rise from a working-class family troubled by addiction, Axios' David Lindsey writes.

• Three takeaways:

1. Homage to Trump. If there's one thing Donald Trump really likes, it's people lining up to sing his praises.

• In his roughly 35-minute speech, Vance spent the first five minutes praising Trump for all sorts of things — his economic policies, his defiance after being wounded by a would-be assassin's bullet, his personal side as a father.
• This was more than a standard "thank you for picking me" tribute. It was Vance playing to the convention's goal of showing a human side to Trump.

2. The feisty Grandma. Vance's recollection of growing up in a troubled family was spiced by his description of his grandmother Bonnie Vance — whom he called Mamaw, and who took care of him when his mother couldn't.

• Vance said that after she died in 2005, family members found "19 loaded handguns" hidden throughout her house. The crowd cheered, and Vance essentially won GOP storytelling Bingo: a cute story about a religious but feisty grandma with guns. "That's who we fight for," the 39-year-old said. "That's the American spirit."

3. Selling MAGA populism. Vance made clear he'll be selling Trump's economic policies to working-class people in the crucial swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

• He railed against Democrats' push for electric vehicles and other policies that he claimed hurt key Rust Belt industries: "Things did not work out well for a lot of kids I grew up with."

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With his back against the wall, President Biden has instinctively defaulted to a familiar but politically dubious argument for staying in the race: his decades of foreign policy experience, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

• Why it matters: Historians may one day praise Biden for strengthening NATO, supporting Ukraine and assembling the AUKUS alliance (Australia, U.K., U.S.). But the current crisis of confidence is about Biden's future — not his past. Some Democrats fear he's missing that point.

🔎 Zoom in: Biden shines most when he's able to flex his foreign policy expertise, sharpened by his years of experience as Senate Foreign Relations chair and then vice president.

• The high point of Biden's press conference after the NATO summit — a comfortable venue for his first major appearance since the June 27 debate — was his deft navigation of a question about China's relationship with Russia.

👀 The problem: There's little evidence that complex foreign policy issues are resonating with voters.

• When polled on all foreign policy issues combined, a single-digit percentage of Americans rated it as the most important problem facing the country, according to Gallup.
• More voters actually have confidence in Trump (49%) to make good decisions about foreign policy than Biden (39%), a shift since 2020, according to a Pew Research poll published this month.

Some of the most damaging moments in Biden's presidency — the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and Israel's ongoing war in Gaza — have been related to foreign policy.

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Above: Republican conventioneers in Milwaukee wear bandages over their ears in tribute to former President Trump.

Rupert Murdoch (left) watches Sen. J.D. Vance's speech last night in a suite with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C). Both desperately tried to talk Trump out of picking Vance, the N.Y. Times' Jonathan Swan tweets.

Trump tchotchkes for sale inside the convention security perimeter.

Peter Navarro — Trump's former trade adviser — speaks at the convention, hours after walking out of federal prison in Miami.

• MSNBC's Jacob Soboroff said the response was "rapturous, definitely the loudest ovation I've heard so far, ad-libbing stuff beyond the prompter — saying there's blood on the hands of [Homeland Security Secretary] Alejandro Mayorkas."

MILWAUKEE — Again and again at their convention this week, Republicans have railed against a mysterious enemy responsible for many of Donald Trump's problems: "They."

• Why it matters: To convention speakers, "they" are responsible for Trump's convictions in New York, his federal indictments, his multimillion-dollar fines in civil lawsuits, record illegal border crossings — and even the attempt to assassinate Trump last weekend, Axios' Stef W. Kight writes.

In Trump's MAGA world, exactly who "they" are usually isn't defined.

• It's typically some combination of Democrats, the federal government, what the former president's supporters call media "elites," and other shadowy forces.

🔎 Zoom in: It's all an escalation of the GOP's rhetoric about elitist forces working behind the scenes to take down Trump, whose political identity is partly rooted in playing a victim who's seeking retribution.

• "They said [Trump] was a tyrant. They say he must be stopped at all costs," vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance said during his prime-time speech.
• "They literally shot him," Vance claimed at a press conference earlier in the day.
• "They use the unelected bureaucracy to impose their will on us without our consent, and they weaponize political power to target their political opponents," Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday.

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Aiming to fight what they see as vague and overly burdensome regulation in Europe, U.S. tech giants are playing one of the strongest cards they have: withholding their products, Axios' Ina Fried writes.

• Why it matters: The U.S. tech giants have dominated the global digital economy by serving (almost) everyone, accepting divergent regional laws as the cost of doing business.

🔬 Zoom in: Meta has decided not to release one of their new AI models and related products in the EU.

• The move follows a similar decision last month by Apple to withhold its new Apple Intelligence features from Europe.

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Tesla's unconventional Cybertruck surpassed the Ford F-150 Lighting as America's most popular electric pickup truck in May, Axios' Joann Muller writes from vehicle registration data.

• Why it matters: Tesla, which has been ramping up production, claims to have 1 million Cybertruck reservations. But true demand for electric pickup trucks is unclear.

🧮 By the numbers: The Cybertruck ranked fifth among all battery-electric vehicles registered in May, according to data compiled by S&P Global Mobility.

👢 P.S. Elon Musk says he's moving the headquarters of X and SpaceX from California to Texas over a new state law that bars districts from requiring that schools notify parents if a student requests a pronoun change.

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Eleven years ago today, Detroit hit rock bottom. But that low point set the city up for a comeback.

• The dramatic story of how Detroit went broke — and what happened next — is featured in "Gradually, Then Suddenly: The Bankruptcy of Detroit," a documentary written by Axios' Nathan Bomey, and debuting on streaming today.

Why it matters: Detroit still has numerous challenges — including a challenged education system, unemployment and crime. But the city is rebounding in a way that few thought was possible on its darkest day.

• The tough decisions it made in bankruptcy set the city on a brighter path, enabling the city to reinvest in public safety, parks, street lights and blight demolition.

Go deeper: Nathan's three lessons from the bankruptcy ... Watch for free on Tubi and YouTube.