Democrats in competitive congressional races are starting to distance themselves from President Biden after his halting debate performance.

• It had been a careful balancing act for many Democrats before the debate, given Biden's shaky poll numbers.
• 🚨 Now swing-district lawmakers and candidates are urgently trying to compartmentalize their races and downplay the guy at the top of the Democratic ticket.

👂 What we're hearing: One swing-district House Democrat, speaking on the condition of anonymity, described frantic efforts to avoid a visit from the president or even First Lady Jill Biden.

• "I don't ever want to see him here," the lawmaker said of Biden, adding that "every single donor — and I'm only calling major donors — is furious and wants him to step aside."
• A senior House Democrat, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, relayed discussions with swing-district members who are "freaking out" about Biden's impact on their races.

🖼️ The big picture: Distancing from an unpopular president is a well-worn strategy in congressional races, but Biden's unique political vulnerabilities as the oldest president in history — topped by that jarring debate Thursday — have given the dynamic a new dimension.

• Congressional Democrats generally have polled ahead of Biden this cycle, but fears are mounting that his unpopularity will be an inescapable drag on their races.
• A House Democrat in a modestly Democratic-leaning district told Axios: "Trump could expand [the electoral map] to a point where I'm in a 1- or 2-point race."

😬 Some members openly acknowledged Biden's poor performance, but many swing-district House Democrats dodged questions about it at the Capitol on Friday. One even reportedly appeared to fake a phone call.

• Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska), who represents the most Republican-leaning district of any Democrat, told Axios she is "not thinking about anybody's race but my own."
• Missy Cotter Smasal, a Democratic House candidate in Virginia, turned heads by pulling out of a Democratic Party event scheduled for the morning after the debate that was meant to counter-program a Trump rally in the district later that day.

📢 What they're saying: Biden campaign official Jen O'Malley Dillon, in a Saturday memo aimed at easing Democrats' anxiety, said "the Beltway class is counting Joe Biden out," but that "data in the battleground states … tells a different story."

• O'Malley Dillon pointed to polls that suggest the tight presidential contest remains largely unchanged after the debate.

Read more.

Some top Democratic donors are waiting on the first batch of polls from major media organizations before deciding whether to press for Biden's removal as the party's presidential nominee, Axios has learned.

• 🔥 For now, fundraisers are holding their fire. But their anxiety is quietly raging after Biden's bad showing in his debate against former President Trump.
• 📆 That makes the next two weeks as crucial to Biden's survival as the initial 24 hours after the debate, when Biden trotted out supportive statements from former Presidents Obama and Clinton and held an energetic rally in North Carolina.

📱 In private, donors frantically are texting one another, eager for any information on just how disastrous the night was. But so far they aren't calling for the party to ditch Biden.

• That could change if the next round of highly regarded polls look as dismal as his debate performance, several donors told Axios.
• "You can't go into an election 10 points down in early July," said one top donor. "You just can't."

🏎️ Driving the news: Top White House officials, including Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, counselor Steve Ricchetti and senior adviser Anita Dunn, worked the phones this weekend calling donors, allies and elected officials, trying to calm nerves.

• They reminded them that the fundamental dynamic of the race hasn't changed: Voters will choose between Biden and Trump.
• 💰 Biden officials cite a pair of sold-out weekend fundraisers — and strong grassroots donations — to bolster their view that die-hard Democrats aren't ditching Biden.
• "Team Biden-Harris has raised over $33M since Thursday, of which $26M is from grassroots donations," Lauren Hitt, a Biden spokesperson, said in a statement. "Nearly half of our grassroots donations were from first-time donors to the campaign this cycle."

Donors likely will want several weeks of polling data before accepting the Biden campaign's line that the president can recover.

• But they're bracing for some potentially bad numbers.

🔬 Zoom in: "There are very honest and serious and rigorous conversations taking place at every level of our party," Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told MSNBC.

• "We're having a serious conversation about what to do. One thing I can tell you is that regardless of what President Biden decides, our party is going to be unified."

Read more.

The Supreme Court tomorrow is expected to issue its much-anticipated decision on whether Trump has legal immunity for his actions as president.

• Trump has asserted that former presidents cannot be prosecuted, even after leaving office, for actions they took while in office.
• ⚡️ A decision by the court granting full or partial immunity to Trump would affect the charges against him in the federal cases involving his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents.

When the justices heard the case in April, it appeared that some conservative justices might be open to at least some presidential immunity.

• Either way, months of courts weighing the issue have essentially handed at least a partial victory to Trump: Whatever the court decides, it's now unlikely either case will be resolved before the Nov. 5 election.

Go deeper: The Supreme Court vs. the executive branch

🤺 Biden's struggles got most of the headlines, but he did land a few jabs on Trump in a debate that was long on insults and short on cogent policy discussions. A review of some of Thursday night's most memorable zingers:

🤔 Trump: "I don't know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don't think he knows what he said either."

• In what many saw as the debate's signature exchange, Biden lost his train of thought when describing several of his accomplishments, ending with a curious statement: "We finally beat Medicare."
• Trump pounced, and followed up with this: "He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death, and he's destroying Medicare."

💥 Biden: "You're the sucker. You're the loser."

• Biden hit Trump on a long-reported story — confirmed by Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly — about Trump calling military veterans "suckers" and "losers." (Kelly also has quoted Trump as saying didn't want to be photographed with military amputees because "it doesn't look good for me.")
• Biden's late son, Beau, was a veteran. The president made it personal with Trump.
• "My son was not a sucker or a loser," Biden said of Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015.
• Trump, as he has in the past, said Kelly's recollection is false.

Trump: "I will not block" mifepristone, the abortion pill.

• Trump committed to not banning abortion pills at the federal level.
• Republicans have struggled to find their messaging on reproductive rights ever since the conservative-led Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago. Trump said mifepristone should be regulated at the state level; he's said the same thing about abortion procedures.

🇮🇱 Biden: "We saved Israel."

• Biden defended Trump's attacks on his foreign policy, particularly how the administration responded to Hamas' attack on Israel last year. Trump claimed the Hamas attack would have never happened if he had been in office.
• Biden took credit for protecting Israel from drone and missile attacks this year.
• Polls indicate many voters — particularly younger ones — disapprove of Biden's handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

👀 Trump: "He could be a convicted felon."

• Trump again hinted that if wins in November, his Justice Department could prosecute Biden. For what, exactly, isn't clear.
• Trump has talked a lot about retribution against Biden and political foes on the campaign trail. He said Thursday night that his retribution would be "success," even as he threatened Biden with legal action.
• The barb from Trump came after Biden pointed out that Trump is the only man on the stage who is a convicted felon.

🐱 Biden: Trump has "the morals of an alley cat."

Trump: "I did not have sex with a porn star."

• One of Biden's most aggressive attacks was when he went after Trump for his convictions in New York that stemmed from a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
• Trump continues to deny he had sex with Daniels.

😭 Biden: "You're a whiner."

• Biden followed Trump's waffling on whether he'd accept the results of the 2024 election by saying his continued refusal to accept the 2020 results show Trump is a "whiner."
• Trump said he'd accept the 2024 results of the election is "fair." That was the same thing he said before the 2020 election.

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