🎯 It's hard to imagine a better week of news for Donald Trump — a positive new poll, followed by President Biden's disastrous debate performance and a Supreme Court ruling that's likely to delay the former president's trial on charges he tried to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

• 🌊 Trump gets to ride the wave into a critical phase of his campaign with the Republican National Convention meeting in two weeks, while Democrats publicly question whether they're backing the wrong candidate.

🗳️ If Trump wins the Nov. 5 election, analysts might point to the last several days as the moment the tide turned. At the very least, it's the low point of Biden's campaign. Here's a recap:

• 📈 Wednesday, the latest New York Times/Siena College poll showed Trump with his biggest lead yet over Biden among likely voters — despite Trump's May 30 felony conviction. The Times noted the poll was an outlier.
• Thursday, Biden had what might be the most disastrous political moment of his career, struggling through the 90-minute debate. Trump largely kept his cool but spewed misinformation — and went largely unchecked while doing so.
• It fueled a weekend of wall-to-wall coverage of a dismayed Democratic Party and speculation over whether the president could be persuaded to withdraw from the race.
• ⚖️ On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that could provide a clearer path for a potential second Trump administration to quickly reverse Biden's climate and other regulatory policies.
• And this morning, the court ruled 6-3 that presidents have immunity for official acts — providing Trump cover for some of the criminal charges he still faces and all but guaranteeing that his Jan. 6 case won't go to trial before the election.

What they're saying: "We've certainly had a strong week," Trump spokesperson Danielle Alvarez told Axios.

• "Democrats are descending into total chaos while the Republican Party is united behind President Donald Trump headed into the fall," National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Steve Daines (R-Mont.) told Axios in a statement.
• Trump called the ruling a vindication, posting on Truth Social: "The Supreme Court totally dismantled most of the charges against me. Joe Biden should now call off his dogs."

The other side: Democrats admit it hasn't been a great few days for Biden but argue it wasn't a particularly winning time for Trump either.

• 💵 The campaign has touted Thursday's debate day as its best grassroots fundraising day, and is trying to use today's ruling to focus voters' attention on Trump's role in the Jan. 6 attack and the potential for him to have unfettered powers if he's re-elected.
• "Donald Trump did not have a good debate night either. Voters didn't like what they saw from him," Biden campaign pollster Molly Murphy told MSNBC.
• Since the debate, Trump "has taken his unhinged tirades to social media, radio, and rally stages" and is "doubling down on threats to our democracy," campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa told Axios in a statement.

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🎨 Democrats are painting a grim picture of what today's Supreme Court ruling would mean for a second Trump term, saying it could give a president bent on chaos unfettered power to carry it out.

• 🥊 They're also vowing to fight back by pressing legislation aimed at reining in the court and through an ad campaign warning about the risk of re-electing Trump.
• The moves come as Democrats are trying to direct voters' attention toward Trump — and away from Biden's lackluster debate performance.

⚡️ House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), in a statement reacting to the ruling, said House Democrats "will engage in aggressive oversight and legislative activity" in response.

• The aim, he said, will be to "ensure that the extreme, far-right justices in the majority are brought into compliance with the Constitution."

💥 Today's opinion "weaponizes, beyond even Donald Trump's wildest fantasies, the power and the immunity he would have to go after anybody he perceives as his enemies," Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) told Axios.

• "There would be no boundaries, no safeguards. Our lives would be upended," Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) said.
• "People are waking up today realizing: 'Holy sh*t, this is happening. This is really a scary time in the country,'" Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said.

To drive home that message, the Democratic National Committee will take over the digital homepages of three major battleground-state newspapers tomorrow, hitting Trump as a threat to democracy, Axios has learned.

• The DNC's takeover of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Philadelphia Inquirer and the Arizona Republic's homepages will underscore the connection between the court's ruling and Trump's refusal to say he'll accept the 2024 election results, Axios has learned.
• The pages will direct readers to a new digital ad featuring clips from the debate when Trump — three times — would not commit to accepting the outcome of the Nov. 5 vote, along with footage of the Jan. 6 riot.

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👀 Many top Democratic donors are carefully watching polls over the next several weeks before deciding whether to call for Biden to be replaced on the party's ticket before the party's convention begins Aug. 19.

• 📆 But the calendar for any such change is a lot shorter than that.

🗳️ As Axios' Hans Nichols reported in May, Democrats plan to hold a virtual roll call of delegates well before the convention because Ohio requires parties to submit candidates' names for its ballot by Aug. 7.

• The roll call could happen as early as July 21, Bloomberg first reported today.
• That would mean the window for replacing Biden is here, for just a couple of weeks — and no one's sure how that would work anyway.

Biden's team has been rushing to shore up its support among Democratic officeholders, allies and donors since his debate debacle, while noting the president won nearly 4,000 party delegates in the primaries.

• 😬 That hasn't tamped down many senior Democrats' anxiety about Biden being a drag on the party's House and Senate candidates — but he is showing no inclination to step aside.

🎤 Biden's former press secretary Jen Psaki will sit for an interview this month in the House Foreign Affairs Committee's probe into the U.S. military's exit from Afghanistan, according to a letter from her lawyer to the panel obtained by Axios.

• Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chair of the committee, is set to release a report on Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan before the Nov. 5 election.
• It could contain politically damaging information about the withdrawal, which included the deaths of 13 U.S. soldiers in a bombing at the Kabul airport.
• The panel's probe has unearthed inconsistencies between what Biden and the White House were saying publicly, and what was happening on the ground.

🚗 Driving the news: Psaki, now with MSNBC, agreed to an interview after a lengthy back-and-forth that started last fall — and once McCaul made clear he was willing to subpoena her to appear.

• McCaul contacted Psaki's team in September 2023, engaging with her team and the White House counsel's office.
• 📖 His team renewed his request several months later, after Axios reported Psaki had falsely recounted a key episode of the withdrawal in her recent memoir.

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