💥 President Biden came out firing today against the rising number of congressional Democrats calling for him to drop his bid for re-election, blasting his critics and challenging them to take him on at the party's August convention.

• ⚡️ Biden's counterstrike — a letter to many Hill Democrats, a fiery call-in interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and a call with roughly 400 donors (see below) — kicked off a week that many Democrats see as crucial to the viability of his campaign.

For Biden, the really hard part begins tomorrow, when House and Senate Democrats hold separate gatherings in which lawmakers will share their views — and in some cases, challenge Biden to prove his viability.

😒 The president's call for support follows a week in which a growing number of Democratic lawmakers urged him to drop out of the race — the fallout from his disastrous debate against former President Trump that fueled questions about his health and mental acuity.

• "The question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now. And it's time for it to end," the 81-year-old president wrote in today's letter.
• "We have one job. And that is to beat Donald Trump. ... It is time to come together, move forward as a unified party, and defeat Donald Trump."
• Biden also called out "elites" in the Democratic Party, saying they're among those who want him bumped off the party's ticket.
• 📉 Actually, post-debate polls indicate 60% of voters think he should be replaced.

Biden's public relations tour de force was accompanied by statements of support from several lawmakers, including some members of the Congressional Black Caucus, which planned to meet with the president in a Zoom tonight.

• The vibe from Biden: Get on board, now.

👎 Not everyone was feeling it.

• Even as Biden seemed to be solidifying some support in Congress, Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, became the latest Democrat to go public with a call for Biden to drop his re-election bid.
• One House Democrat told Axios' Andrew Solender that Biden's PR blitz was "largely posturing and pulling heartstrings," adding: "The problem is the hard reality of this situation and he just seems completely insulated from that reality."

🩺 Questions about Biden's health also aren't going away.

• White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre faced a barrage of questions over reports that a specialist in Parkinson's disease had visited the White House eight times during the past year.
• During a heated exchange with reporters, Jean-Pierre said Biden isn't being treated for Parkinson's and isn't taking medication for the disease.

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Biden's push to quiet his Democratic critics included a simple and direct message for the doubting donors who've vowed to stop giving until he steps aside: He's in this race to win it.

📞 In a midday call with donors, the president forcefully repeated an argument that animated his candidacy in 2020.

• He's the best person to beat Trump, he said, according to three participants on the call.
• 🎤 "We're done talking about the debate," he said, adding it was time to move on and keep the focus on Trump.
• Asked how he planned to handle Trump in their next showdown, Biden said, "Attack." He also promised to call out Trump's "lies" in real time.

Donors typically operate behind the scenes and don't make public pronouncements about the candidates they support. But they do vote with their wallets — and lately, a few have been vocal about Biden's troubles.

• If he wants to match former Trump in a summer advertising war, he needs to prevent more defections, after a trio of Hollywood donors made the rare move of calling on him to withdraw.

💵 By the numbers: Every Democratic donor who walks away represents a potential loss of more than $1 million, according to Democratic fundraisers.

• The federal limit to all Biden committees is $929,600, according to an invitation to a donor retreat last year obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times. There are no limits for super PAC donations.
• 🎬 Netflix co-founder and executive chairman Reed Hastings, who has called on Biden to step aside, gave about $1.5 million for Biden's 2020 election. For 2024, he's kicked in just $100,000.
• Then there's former Paypal CEO Bill Harris, who gave $620,000 to the Biden Victory Fund in 2020, but thinks the prospect of Biden stepping aside is "inevitable." He doesn't appear to have given in 2024.
• Harris created a super PAC, Democrats for the Next Generation, this month that's pledged $2 million to fund debates for possible candidates if Biden drops out.

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🐘 The Republican Party today adopted a platform that for the first time in four decades doesn't include language backing a national ban on abortion, the latest sign that Trump's GOP is trying to soften its tone on the politically potent issue.

• 🗳️ Abortion is one of the GOP's biggest potential vulnerabilities, as Democrats seek to repeat their success in the 2022 midterms by turning voters' anger over the conservative-led Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade into votes against Republicans.

Trump repeatedly has bragged about appointing three of the justices who helped overturn Roe, but he wants to avoid another backlash at the polls.

• He's resisted anti-abortion advocates' calls for a national ban, saying it wouldn't get through Congress and is a losing issue for the GOP.
• He wants abortion regulations left to the states, a situation that Democrats say leads to unfair, uneven and chaotic health care policies across the country.

🔬 Zoom in: The Republican National Committee's platform, which mirrors Trump's platform on several policy issues, says the party opposes "late term abortion" and supports "access to birth control, and IVF (fertility treatments)."

• The document — approved in advance of the GOP's convention next week in Milwaukee — touches on several other Trump campaign priorities, such as supporting mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and ruling out cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
• It also echoes some of Trump's frequent rhetoric, such as calling for ending "the weaponization of government" and promoting election integrity — a key issue for Trump, who continues to falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen.

The other side: Democrats have made protecting access to reproductive rights a unifying theme of their campaigns, and they've repeatedly tied Trump to the state-level abortion restrictions that have passed in the two years since Roe was overturned.

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