WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris has secured the support of enough Democratic delegates to become her party’s nominee against Republican Donald Trump, according to an Associated Press survey, as top Democrats rallied to her in the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s decision to drop his bid for reelection,

The quick coalescing behind Harris marked an attempt by the party to put weeks of internecine drama over Biden’s political future behind them and to unify behind the task of defeating Trump with just over 100 days until Election Day. Prominent Democratic elected officials, party leaders and political organizations quickly lined up behind Harris in the day after Biden’s exit from the race and her campaign set a new 24-hour record for presidential donations on Monday.

Several state delegations met late Monday to confirm their support for Harris, including Texas and her home state of California. By Monday night, Harris had the support of at least 2,471 delegates, according to the AP tally of delegates, more than the 1,976 delegates she’ll need to win on a first ballot. No other candidate was named by a delegate contacted by the AP.

California state Democratic Chairman Rusty Hicks said 75% to 80% of the state’s delegation were on a call Tuesday and they unanimously supported Harris.

“I’ve not heard anyone mentioning or calling for any other candidate,” Hicks said. “Tonight’s vote was a momentous one.”

Still, the AP is not calling Harris the new presumptive nominee. That’s because the convention delegates are still free to vote for the candidate of their choice at the convention in August or if Democrats go through with a virtual roll call ahead of that gathering in Chicago.

Worries over Biden’s fitness for office were replaced by fresh signs of unity after a seismic shift to the presidential contest that upended both major political parties’ carefully honed plans for the 2024 race.

Speaking to campaign staff in Wilmington, Delaware, Harris acknowledged the “rollercoaster” of the last several weeks, but expressed confidence in her new campaign team.

“It is my intention to go out and earn this nomination and to win,” she said. She promised to “unite our Democratic Party, to unite our nation, and to win this election.”

She quickly leaned into the themes that will be prominent in her campaign against Trump over the coming 100 days, contrasting her time as a prosecutor with Trump’s felony convictions — “I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said — and casting herself as a defender of economic opportunity and abortion access.

“Our fight for the future is also a fight for freedoms,” she said. “The baton is in our hands.”

The president called into the meeting from his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where he is recovering from COVID-19, to lend his support to Harris. He planned to talk about his decision to step aside in an address to the nation later this week.

“The name has changed at the top of the ticket, but the mission hasn’t changed at all,” Biden said in his first public remarks since announcing his decision to step aside, promising he was “not going anywhere” and plans to campaign on Harris’ behalf.

Biden said of his decision, “It was the right thing to do.”

As he handed off the mantle of leadership to Harris, Biden added: “I’m watching you kid. I love you.”

Harris was headed to the battleground state of Wisconsin on Tuesday as her campaign for the White House kicks into high gear. The event in Milwaukee will be her first full-fledged campaign event since announcing her candidacy.

The AP tally is based on interviews with individual delegates, public statements from state parties, many of which have announced that their delegations are supporting Harris en masse, and public statements and endorsements from individual delegates.

Locking up the nomination was only the first item on the staggering political to-do list for Harris after learning of Biden’s plans to leave the race Sunday morning on a call with the president. She must also pick a running mate and pivot a massive political operation that had been built to reelect Biden to boost her candidacy instead.

On Sunday afternoon, Biden’s campaign formally changed its name to Harris for President, reflecting that she is inheriting his political operation of more than 1,000 staffers and war chest that stood at nearly $96 million at the end of June. She added $81 million to that total in the first 24 hours after Biden’s endorsement, her campaign said — a presidential fundraising record — with contributions from more than 888,000 donors.

The campaign also saw a surge of interest after Harris took over, with more than 28,000 new volunteers registered since the announcement — a rate more than 100 times an average day from the previous Biden reelection campaign, underscoring the enthusiasm behind Harris.

Big-name Harris endorsements Monday, including from Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Andy Beshear of Kentucky, left a vanishing list of potential rivals.

House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who had been one of the notable holdouts, initially encouraging a primary to strengthen the eventual nominee, said she was lending her “enthusiastic support” to Harris’ effort to lead the party.

Harris, if elected, would be the first woman and first person of South Asian descent to be president.

The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to be held Aug. 19-22 in Chicago, but the party had announced it would hold a virtual roll call to formally nominate Biden before in-person proceedings begin. The convention’s rules committee is scheduled to meet this week to finalize its nomination process with a virtual vote as soon as Aug. 1, the party announced on Monday, with the process completed by Aug. 7.

“We can and will be both fast and fair as we execute this nomination,” Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee’s chair, said on a conference call with reporters.

The party said the virtual roll call would feature multiple rounds of voting on nominees if multiple candidates meet the qualification threshold. To qualify, candidates must have the electronic signatures of 300 convention delegates.

A new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 6 in 10 Democrats believe Kamala Harris would do a good job in the top slot. About 2 in 10 Democrats don’t believe she would, and another 2 in 10 say they don’t know enough to say.

Since Biden’s debate debacle on June 27, many Democrats have privately and even openly looked to Harris to step in and succeed Biden as the party’s presidential nominee, believing she has a better chance against GOP nominee Donald Trump. For her part, Harris has remained completely loyal to Biden, being one of his toughest defenders in the aftermath of the disastrous debate performance.

Oakley Graham, a Democrat in Greenwood, Missouri, said while he is “pretty happy” with Biden’s accomplishments in office, he felt that he would be more excited to support Harris at the top of the ticket and that it was “about time” a woman becomes president.

“I know he’s got unfinished business,” Graham, 30, said of Biden. “But it would be nice to see a person of color, a woman, somebody younger to step up and to lead that charge. I would hope that that would inspire a younger generation to be more engaged.”

Black adults –- a key contingent of the Democrats’ coalition and a group that remains relatively more favorable to Biden than others — are more likely than Americans overall to say that Harris would do well.

As for Americans more broadly, they are more skeptical of how Harris would perform in the Oval Office. Only about 3 in 10 U.S. adults overall say Harris would do well as president. About half say Harris would not do a good job in the role, and 2 in 10 say they don’t know enough to say.

Harris’ favorability rating is similar to Biden’s, but the share of Americans who have an unfavorable opinion of her is somewhat lower. The poll showed that about 4 in 10 U.S. adults have a favorable opinion of Harris, while about half have an unfavorable opinion. There are more Americans with a negative view of Biden: approximately 6 in 10. About 1 in 10 Americans say they don’t know enough to have an opinion of Harris, whereas nearly everyone has an opinion on Biden.

About three-quarters of Democrats have a positive view of Harris, which is in line with how Democrats view Biden. Seven in 10 have a favorable view of him.

Shannon Bailey, a Democrat who lives in Tampa, praised Biden’s accomplishments as president –- particularly with his infrastructure law and efforts to tame inflation — and said he’ll be “remembered fondly.” But she had a more favorable view of Harris than she does the incumbent president because, in Bailey’s view, the vice president appears more “capable of handling the taxing nature of the job.”

“It’s not just the physical stamina part, but also the cognitive reasoning part right now,” said Bailey, 34. “It’s important to be able to concisely and persuasively get the message across that is the Democratic platform right now.”

Bailey said the Democratic Party needs Harris and a running mate “who can really motivate people to go out to the polls” — a task that she’s skeptical Biden can do as effectively.

Harris’s position as the administration’s lead messenger on abortion also has endeared her to many Democrats.

“I think she would be a very strong advocate for abortion, has been and would continue to be,” said Thomas Mattman, a Democrat from Chico, California. “The Republicans have gone with white men as their ticket, and both of them have said some pretty specific things about being opposed to abortion so I think that would be a very strong argument.”

Mattman, 59, said he believes Biden will not be able to defeat Republican nominee Donald Trump — a prospect that leaves Mattman “very distraught.” Harris would be a much more effective candidate because Biden is unable to “put pressure” on his opponent and exploit his weaknesses, Mattman said.

Harris is more popular among Black Americans than she is among white or Hispanic adults. She is more disliked by men than she is by women.

Other prominent Democrats who have been floated as potential replacements are less known than Harris is. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults don’t have an opinion of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and half are unfamiliar with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Newsom is seen, overall, slightly more negatively than positively. Americans are divided about evenly on Whitmer: 24% have a favorable view and 22% have an unfavorable view.

More Democrats see Harris rather than Newsom or Whitmer as someone who would make a good president, though that’s partly because they’re relative unknowns. About one-third of Democrats say Newsom would make a good president, and half don’t know enough to say. About one-quarter of Democrats say Whitmer would do well, and about two-thirds don’t know enough to say.

Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, is unknown to most Americans. In the AP-NORC poll, which was conducted before Trump made Vance his vice presidential choice, 6 in 10 Americans don’t know enough about him to form an opinion. About 2 in 10 U.S. adults have a favorable view of Vance, and about 2 in 10 view him negatively. Among Republicans, 61% don’t know enough to have an opinion of Vance. About one-quarter have a positive view of him, and roughly 1 in 10 have a negative view.

The poll of 1,253 adults was conducted July 11-15, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

But in response to questions from journalists over the last few weeks, the embattled Democratic president has given some clues as to what could make him step aside — especially as the calls from his own party to end his candidacy continue unabated.

Here are the things Biden has cited — some serious, others not — that would make him reconsider his run:

Divine intervention

It was a defiant answer that indicated Biden had no intention whatsoever of dropping out.

During an ABC News interview that marked the first major test of his fitness for office, anchor George Stephanopoulos asked the 81-year-old Biden whether he had convinced himself that only he could defeat his Republican opponent, Donald Trump.

“I have convinced myself of two things,” Biden said. “I’m the most qualified person to beat him, and I know how to get things done.”

Stephanopoulos pressed a little further: “If you can be convinced that you cannot defeat Donald Trump, will you stand down?”

“It depends,” Biden responded. “I mean, if the Lord Almighty comes out and tells me that, I might do that.”

Cold, hard data

No politician ever wants to lose — and it seems Biden would be willing to exit if he had numerical proof that that’s what would happen.

In a news conference at the close of the NATO summit in Washington last week, Biden was asked whether he would step aside if aides showed him that Vice President Kamala Harris would be a stronger opponent than he would be against Trump.

Biden’s initial response was “no,” but then he elaborated.

“Unless they came back and said, ‘there’s no way you can win.’ Me,” he said. “No one is saying that. No poll says that.”

The limited polling available suggests a competitive race with several months before the election. Several polls of voters give Trump a slight advantage, while others show neither candidate with an advantage.

A fateful accident

Biden wasn’t directly asked the hypothetical, but he threw in a new scenario anyway.

As Speedy Morman, a host on the entertainment network Complex, was wrapping up his interview with Biden last week in Detroit, he had one more closing question for the president: “We will 1,000 percent — in your words — see you on the ballot this November?”

Quipped Biden: “Unless I get hit by a train, yeah.”

Morman responded: “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen, for your safety’s concern.”

A not-yet-diagnosed medical ailment

Biden spoke with BET journalist Ed Gordon for an interview set to air Wednesday night. During the conversation, Gordon asked Biden if there were any factors that would make him reevaluate his candidacy.

He didn’t repeat the other reasons that he had previously listed — but rather surfaced a new one.

“If I had some medical condition that emerged,” Biden told Gordon. “If doctors came to me and said, ‘you got this problem, that problem.’”

The health of Biden, the oldest person to be U.S. president, has been scrutinized well before his catastrophic debate performance.

After his latest physical in February, presidential doctor Kevin O’Connor said Biden “remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” A neurological exam, taken more than a month prior, showed no signs of a stroke, multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s disease, according to O’Connor. The physician also said a cognitive exam was unnecessary.

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Associated Press writer Amelia Thomson-Deveaux contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden used his highly anticipated news conference Thursday to deliver a forceful defense of his foreign and domestic policies, and batted away questions about his ability to serve another four years even as he flubbed a reference to Donald Trump in one of his first answers.

“I’m not in this for my legacy. I’m in this to complete the job I started,” Biden said as he insisted his support among the electorate was strong and he would stay in the race and would win.

Fumbles notwithstanding, the president pushed back at every suggestion that was slowing down or showing noticeable signs of decline, or that he was not in command of the job. But he was facing a growing chorus of calls from lawmakers, celebrities and other prominent Democrats to step aside from the 2024 race.

“My schedule has been full bore,” he declared. “So if I slow down and I cant get the job done, that’s a sign that I shouldn’t be doing it. But there’s no indication of that yet — none.”

Democrats are facing an intractable problem. Top donors, supporters and key lawmakers are doubtful of Biden’s abilities to carry on his reelection bid after his disastrous June 27 debate performance, but the hard-fighting 81-year-old president refuses to give up as he prepares to take on Trump in a rematch.

“I’m determined on running but I think it’s important that I allay fears — let them see me out there,” he said.

The first questioner of Biden’s press conference asked about him losing support among many of his fellow Democrats and unionists, and asked about Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden was at first defiant, saying the “UAW endorsed me, but go ahead,” meaning the United Auto Workers. But then he mixed up Harris and Trump, saying, “I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be Vice President if she wasn’t qualified.”

Trump weighed in live on Biden’s news conference with a post on his social media network of a video clip of the president saying “Vice President Trump.”

Trump added sarcastically, “Great job, Joe!”

Most of the hourlong press conference was vintage Biden: He gave long answers on foreign policy and told well-worn anecdotes. He used teleprompters for his opening remarks on NATO, which ran about eight minutes. Then the teleprompters lowered and he took a wide range of questions from 10 journalists about his mental acuity, foreign and domestic policy and — mostly — the future of his campaign.

“I believe I’m the best qualified to govern. I believe I’m the best qualitied to win,” Biden said, adding that he will stay in the race until his staff says, “There’s no way you can win.”

“No one’s saying that,” he said. “No poll says that.”

Earlier, Biden’s campaign laid out what it sees as its path to keeping the White House in a new memo, saying that winning the “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan is the “clearest pathway” to victory. And it declared no other Democrat would do better against Trump.

“There is also no indication that anyone else would outperform the president vs. Trump,” said the memo from campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez that was obtained by The Associated Press.

The memo sought to brush back “hypothetical polling of alternative nominees ” as unreliable and it said such surveys “do not take into account the negative media environment that any Democratic nominee will encounter.”

Meanwhile, the campaign has been quietly surveying voters on Harris to determine how she’s viewed among the electorate, according to two people with knowledge of the campaign who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to talk about internal matters.

The people said the polling was not necessarily to show that she could be the nominee in Biden’s place, but rather to better understand how she’s viewed. The research came after Trump stepped up his attacks against Harris following the debate, according to another person familiar with the effort. The survey was first reported by The New York Times.

While Biden has expressed confidence in his chances, his campaign on Thursday acknowledged he is behind, and a growing number of the president’s aides in the White House and the campaign privately harbor doubts that he can turn things around.

But they’re taking their cues from Biden, expressing that he is in 100% unless and until he isn’t, and there appears to be no organized internal effort to persuade the president to step aside. His allies were well aware heading into the week there would be more calls for him to step down, and they were prepared for it.

But in announcing a compact that would bring together NATO countries to support Ukraine, Biden referred to the nation’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin” to audible gasps in the room. He quickly returned to the microphone: “President Putin — he’s going to beat President Putin … President Zelenskyy,” Biden said.

Then he said, “I’m so focused on beating Putin,” in an effort to explain the gaffe.

“I’m better,” Zelenskyy replied. “You’re a hell of a lot better,” Biden said back.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer invited Biden’s team to meet with senators privately at the lunch hour to discuss concerns and the path forward, but some senators groused they would prefer to hear from the president himself. In the Senate, only Peter Welch of Vermont has so far called for Biden to step out of the race.

The 90-minute conversation with the president’s team, which one person said included no new data, polling or game plan on how Biden would beat Trump, did not appear to change senators’ minds. The person was granted anonymity to discuss the closed door session.

The meeting was frank, angry at times and also somewhat painful, since many in the room know and love Biden, said one senator who requested anonymity to discuss the private briefing. Senators confronted the advisers over Biden’s performance at the debate and the effect on Senate races this year

One Democrat, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, said afterward, “My belief is that the president can win, but he’s got to be able to go out and answer voters’ concerns. He’s got to be able to talk to voters directly over the next few day.”

At the same time, influential senators are standing strongly with Biden, leaving the party at an impasse.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, told the AP he thinks Biden “is going to win this election. I think he has a chance to win it big.”

Sanders said he has been publicly critical of the campaign, and said Biden needs to talk more about the future and his plans for the country. “As we come closer to Election Day, the choices are very clear,” he said.

Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo, Colleen Long, Mary Clare Jalonick, Kevin Freking, Farnoush Amiri and Linley Sanders contributed to this report.

Then-President Trump arrived at that first matchup in Cleveland seemingly determined to steamroll Biden at every turn, leaving the Democratic candidate exasperated and moderator Chris Wallace scrambling to regain control.

Now, in 2024, many of the rules insisted on this time by Biden’s team — and agreed to by the Trump campaign — are designed to minimize the potential of a chaotic rerun. Each candidate’s microphone will be muted, except when it’s his turn to speak. There will be no studio audience to chime in with hoots and jeers.

The second and final presidential debate of 2020, held in Nashville, Tennessee, was a far more subdued event than the first, aided by a mute button and participants who were perhaps chastened by terrible reviews from the first matchup, particularly for Trump.

But if the Biden-Trump debate this Thursday in Atlanta spirals into pandemonium, consider that past was prologue.

A look back at that first Biden-Trump faceoff on Sept. 29, 2020:

The debate begins to devolve

It started out calmly enough, with a brief exchange about the Supreme Court vacancy that had opened up days before with the sudden death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But the conversation turned contentious as the men tangled over health care and Trump’s handling of COVID-19.

The sparring over the pandemic was tense enough — with Biden telling Wallace at one point, “You’re not going to be able to shut him up.” Then Biden pivoted back to the court and abortion rights, triggering yet another outburst from Trump that continued to irritate the Democrat (and likely Wallace, and perhaps the viewing public).

“The point is that the president also is opposed to Roe v. Wade,” Biden said of Trump. “That’s on the ballot as well and the court, in the court, and so that’s also at stake right now. And so the election is all —”

“You don’t know what’s on the ballot. Why is it on the ballot?” Trump interrupted. “Why is it on the ballot? It’s not on the ballot.”

Trump would continue to interject until Biden showed his first real sign of irritation with his opponent and said: “Donald, would you just be quiet for a minute?”

But Trump didn’t relent, refusing to let Wallace question him about his Obamacare replacement plan without interruptions and taunting Biden that his primary election victory over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was “not by much” and that he “just lost the left” when he distanced himself from Sanders’ vision for health care.

“Folks,” Biden finally said, conveying his irritation to the audience, “do you have any idea what this clown’s doing?”

Biden: “Will you shut up, man?”

One clip replayed at length from the chaos in Cleveland was Biden finally snapping at Trump: “Will you shut up, man?”

It came during a discussion over progressive proposals to overhaul Senate procedural rules or the Supreme Court itself — topics that have been tricky for an institutionalist such as Biden. The Democrat was, as he openly admitted, refusing to answer the question.

So Trump took matters into his own hands.

“Are you going to pack the court? Are you going to pack the court?” Trump demanded as Biden tried to make a case directly to the audience. Trump muttered that Biden didn’t want to answer the question.

“Why wouldn’t you answer that question? You want to put a lot of new Supreme Court justices. Radical left,” Trump concluded.

That’s when Biden — again — lost patience. “Will you shut up, man?”

But Trump — again — wouldn’t relent, forcing Wallace to cut the segment short and move on to a different topic. Biden lamented how unproductive the discussion was.

Trump insults Biden’s intelligence

The Republican also didn’t hesitate to get personal, from attacking Biden’s sole living son, Hunter, to mocking the Democrat’s academic credentials.

It seemed like Trump had been waiting for Biden to use any derivation of the word “smart” to go after his intelligence. So when Biden warned that more Americans would die from COVID-19 unless the president got smarter in his handling of the pandemic, Trump pounced.

“Did you use the word smart?” Trump said. “So you said you went to Delaware State, but you forgot the name of your college. You didn’t go to Delaware State. You graduated either the lowest or almost the lowest in your class.”

“Don’t ever use the word smart with me,” continued Trump, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. “Don’t ever use that word … Because you know what? There’s nothing smart about you, Joe.”

Biden received his undergraduate degree from the University of Delaware in Newark in 1965 and enrolled shortly thereafter at Syracuse University law school. He wasn’t known for his stellar grades; at Syracuse, he graduated 76th in a class of 85.

Trump nods to the Proud Boys

It was one of Trump’s most memorable moments that didn’t involve interrupting Biden.

Wallace pushed Trump to condemn white supremacists and militia groups, particularly as the Republican president spent so much of his energy denouncing so-called “Antifa” or far-left militant groups.

Trump responded that he was willing to do so, but never explicitly condemned right-wing extremist groups by name. When goaded by Biden to condemn the Proud Boys, one of such groups on the right, Trump seemingly did the opposite.

“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said. Those words, and the broader exchange, left some members of the neofascist group celebrating what they saw as an implicit approval from the president.

Trump was forced into clean-up duty one day later, saying he did not know who the Proud Boys were and adding that “whoever they are, they have to stand down. Let law enforcement do their work.”

The contentious exchange about Biden’s sons

Biden has long criticized Trump’s attitude toward American troops, including his reported comments that in 2018, he did not want to visit a U.S. military cemetery in France because he thought the deceased soldiers were “suckers” and “losers.”

“The way you talk about the military, the way you talk about them being losers and being, and, and, and just being suckers,” Biden said to Trump. Speaking of his older son, Beau, a veteran who died of brain cancer, Biden continued: “My son was in Iraq. He spent a year there. He got — he got the Bronze Star. He got the Conspicuous Service Medal. He was not a loser. He was a patriot.”

Trump swung back hard, taking aim at Biden’s younger son, Hunter, instead.

“Are you talking Hunter? Are you talking about Hunter?” Trump responded, continuing: “I don’t know Beau. I know Hunter. Hunter got thrown out of the military.”

Trump then claimed that Hunter Biden was dishonorably discharged, which Biden quickly refuted. Hunter Biden was administratively discharged — which is not a dishonorable discharge — from the Navy in 2014 after testing positive for cocaine.

“My son … like a lot of people we know at home had a drug problem. He’s overtaken it,” Biden said, adding: “I’m proud of my son.”

Biden commits to not declaring victory until the election is certified, Trump does not

During the final moments of the first debate, Wallace asked both candidates whether they would commit to not declaring victory until the election had been independently certified, as well as urging their respective supporters to stay calm.

Trump declined to do so, instead saying he would encourage his supporters to go watch the polls and musing about election fraud.

Biden, in sharp contrast, responded to the same question: “Yes.”

Trump, who would go on to lose the 2020 race, never conceded the election. Just over three months after the Cleveland debate, a mob of his supporters fueled by his election lies stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden ordered expansive election-year action Tuesday to offer potential citizenship to hundreds of thousands of immigrants without legal status in the U.S., aiming to balance his recent aggressive crackdown on the southern border that enraged advocates and many Democratic lawmakers.

The president announced that his administration will, in the coming months, allow certain U.S. citizens’ spouses without legal status to apply for permanent residency and eventually citizenship without having to first depart the country. The move from Biden, a Democrat, could affect upwards of half a million immigrants, according to senior administration officials.

“The Statue of Liberty is not some relic of American history. It still stands for who we are,” Biden said from a crowded East Room at the White House, filled with advocates, congressional Democrats and immigrants who would be eligible for the program. “But I also refuse to believe that for us to continue to be America that embraces immigration, we have to give up securing our border. They’re false choices.”

Biden’s action, which amounts to the most expansive federal protection for immigrants in over a decade, sets up a significant political contrast with presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, whose hardline stance on mass deportations includes rhetoric casting migrants as dangerous criminals “poisoning the blood” of America.

On Tuesday, Biden accused “my predecessor” of preying on fears about immigrants as he chastised Trump administration moves, such as a zero-tolerance policy at the southern border that led to the separation of families. But Trump has leaned into his own policies as Biden has faced disapproval of his handling of immigration throughout his presidency. At a rally in Racine, Wis., on Tuesday, Trump proclaimed: “Our country is under invasion. We should not be talking amnesty. We should be talking about stopping the invasion instead.”

To qualify for Biden’s actions, an immigrant must have lived in the United States for 10 years and be married to a U.S. citizen, both as of Monday. If a qualifying immigrant’s application is approved, he or she would have three years to apply for a green card and receive a temporary work permit and be shielded from deportation in the meantime.

About 50,000 noncitizen children with parents who are married to U.S. citizen could also potentially qualify for the process, according to senior administration officials who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity. There is no requirement on how long the couple must have been married, but no one becomes eligible after Monday. That means immigrants who reach that 10-year mark after Monday will not qualify for the program, according to the officials.

Senior administration officials said they anticipate the process will be open for applications by the end of the summer. Fees to apply have yet to be determined.

Biden formally unveiled his plans at a Tuesday event at the White House, which also marked the 12th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, a popular Obama-era directive that offered deportation protections and temporary work permits for young immigrants who lack legal status.

The announcement was welcome news to families with mixed immigration status, such as Antonio and Brenda Valle in Los Angeles. They have been married for nearly 12 years and have two sons who are U.S. citizens, but they have lived with the worry every two years that Brenda Valle’s status as a DACA recipient will not be renewed.

“We can start planning more long-term, for the future, instead of what we can do for the next two years,” she said.

Foday Turay was among those invited to the White House Tuesday for the announcement. He came to the U.S. when he was 10 years old from Sierra Leone, and is now a father to a young son and married to a third-generation U.S. citizen. Although he’s enrolled in DACA and working as an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, his status doesn’t provide relief from the constant worry of deportation.

“My wife is tremendously impacted by this,” Turay said on Tuesday before the ceremony. “You know, every day she talks to me about what’s going to happen. What if I get deported? You know, how are we going to raise our son? What country are we going to raise him?”

Republicans were making their own sharp contrasts with Biden’s plan. In a likely preview of GOP campaign ads, Rep. Richard Hudson, chair of House Republicans’ campaign arm, called the Biden policy a “mass amnesty plan.” Other Republicans, such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, anticipated that this latest directive would be struck down by the courts.

Tuesday’s announcement came two weeks after Biden unveiled a sweeping crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border that effectively halted asylum claims for those arriving between officially designated ports of entry. Immigrant-rights groups have sued the Biden administration over that directive, which a senior administration official said Monday had led to fewer border encounters between ports.

Biden’s allies believe that the approach he is taking with his twin actions on immigration this month will resonate with voters.

“The only party that is being serious about border security is the Democrats. The only party that’s being thoughtful and compassionate about what to do with people who are living in the shadows are the Democrats,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who helped author a bipartisan border bill earlier this year. “The Republican Party has decided to take a walk on border security.”

Because the shadow of a second Trump administration looms over Biden’s new policy, Tuesday’s actions will set off a months-long sprint by Latino organizations to get as many people to apply for the program as possible. Trump could dissolve the program if he is reelected, but immigrants who are granted the parole status would still be protected.

Among advocates, Gustavo Torres, the executive director of CASA, said Biden’s announcement would energize Latino communities to get out and support him.

“This is what our communities have needed to rally behind President Biden for reelection,” he said.

Biden also announced new regulations that will allow certain DACA beneficiaries and other young immigrants to more easily qualify for long-established work visas. That would allow qualifying immigrants to have protection that is sturdier than the work permits offered by DACA, which is currently facing legal challenges and is no longer taking new applications.

The power that Biden is invoking with his Tuesday announcement for spouses is not a novel one. The policy would expand on authority used by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to allow “parole in place” for family members of military members, said Andrea Flores, a former policy adviser in the Obama and Biden administrations who is now a vice president at FWD.us, an immigration advocacy organization.

The parole-in-place process allows qualifying immigrants to get on the path to U.S. permanent residency without leaving the country, removing a common barrier for those without legal status but married to Americans. Flores called it “the biggest win for the immigrant rights movement since the announcement of DACA 12 years ago.”

The same progressives who were infuriated with Biden’s asylum order praised the president on Tuesday. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, commended Biden and said the actions would help keep American families together.

“Many Americans would be shocked to hear that when a U.S. citizen marries an undocumented person, their spouse is not automatically eligible for citizenship,” she said. ”Imagine loving someone, marrying them, and then still continuing to fear you would be separated from them.

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Associated Press writers Christine Fernando in Racine, Wis., Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas, and Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday unveiled plans to enact immediate significant restrictions on migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border as the White House tries to neutralize immigration as a political liability ahead of the November elections.

The long-anticipated presidential proclamation would bar migrants from being granted asylum when U.S. officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed. The Democratic president had contemplated unilateral action for months after the collapse of a bipartisan border security deal in Congress that most Republican lawmakers rejected at the behest of former President Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

Biden said he preferred more lasting action via legislation but “Republicans have left me no choice.” Instead, he said he was acting on his own to “gain control of the border” while also insisting that “I believe immigration has always been the lifeblood of America.”

Trump “told the Republicans … that he didn’t want to fix the issue, he wanted to use it to attack me,” Biden said. “It was a cynical, extremely cynical, political move and a complete disservice to the American people who are looking for us not to weaponize the border but to fix it.”

Trump, on the other hand, used his social media account to assail Biden again over immigration, saying the Democrat had “totally surrendered our Southern Border” and his order was “all for show” ahead of their June 27 presidential debate.

The order will go into effect when the number of border encounters between ports of entry hits 2,500 per day, according to senior administration officials. That means Biden’s order should go into effect immediately, because the daily averages are higher now. Average daily arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico were last below 2,500 in January 2021, the month Biden took office. The last time the border encounters dipped to 1,500 a day was in July 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The restrictions would be in effect until two weeks after the daily encounter numbers are at or below 1,500 per day between ports of entry, under a seven-day average. Those figures were first reported by The Associated Press on Monday.

Homeland Security said increased enforcement with Mexico since high-level bilateral meetings in late December has lowered illegal crossings but is “likely to be less effective over time,” creating a need for more action. “Smuggling networks are adaptable, responding to changes put in place,” the department said in a federal rule published Tuesday.

The department predicts that arrests for illegal crossings may climb to a daily average as high as 6,700 from July through September.

Once this order is in effect, migrants who arrive at the border but do not express fear of returning to their home countries will be subject to immediate removal from the United States, within a matter of days or even hours. Those migrants could face punishments that could include a five-year bar from reentering the U.S. or even criminal prosecution.

Meanwhile, anyone who expresses that fear or an intention to seek asylum will be screened by a U.S. asylum officer but at a higher standard than currently used. If they pass the screening, they can pursue more limited forms of humanitarian protection, including the U.N. Convention Against Torture.

“We’re troubled to see this administration raise the bar on asylum seekers who are coming to our southern border and exercising a legal right,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge. “Certainly no one wants to see migrants who may be coming to seek a better life or for economic opportunity game the asylum system, but we see in our clients and in other immigrants people who are fleeing the most dire of circumstances at a time of unprecedented global migration and believe that the U.S. is still a beacon of hope and refuge.”

At the border Tuesday, there were no visible signs of immediate impact.

Iselande Peralta, a Haitian mother staying at a migrant shelter in Reynosa, Mexico, with her 3-year-old son, said the U.S. was within its rights to enforce new restrictions. She has been trying for 10 months to get an appointment through U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s online app, called CBP One. Peralta, 26, wouldn’t consider crossing illegally and considers CBP One her best option.

“Even if I was crazy, I wouldn’t cross the river. How would I do that with a child as young as him? I’m willing to wait,” she said.

Biden’s directive is coming when the number of migrants encountered at the border have been on a consistent decline since December, but senior administration officials say the numbers are still too high and could spike in better weather, as is typical.

Yet many questions and complications remain about how Biden’s directive would be implemented.

For instance, the administration already has an agreement with Mexico in which Mexico agrees to accept up to 30,000 citizens a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela once they are denied entry from the U.S., and senior administration officials say that will continue under this order. But it is unclear what happens to nationals of other countries who are denied under Biden’s directive.

Four senior administration officials, who insisted on anonymity to describe the effort to reporters, acknowledged that Biden’s goal of deporting migrants quickly is complicated by insufficient funding from Congress to do so. The administration also faces certain legal constraints when it comes to detaining migrant families, and the administration said it would continue to abide by those obligations.

The legal authority being invoked by Biden comes under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows a president to limit entries for certain migrants if their entry is deemed “detrimental” to the national interest. Senior officials expressed confidence that they would be able to implement Biden’s order, despite threats from prominent legal groups to file lawsuits over the directive.

“We intend to sue,” Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who successfully argued similar legal challenges when Trump was president. “A ban on asylum is illegal, just as it was when Trump unsuccessfully tried it.”

The senior administration officials insisted that Biden’s proposal differs dramatically from that of Trump, who leaned on the same provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act that Biden is using, including Trump’s 2017 directive to bar citizens of Muslim-majority nations and his efforts in 2018 to clamp down on asylum.

Biden’s order outlines several groups of migrants who would be exempted due to humanitarian reasons, including victims of human trafficking, unaccompanied minors and those with severe medical emergencies.

The directive would also exempt migrants who make appointments with border officials at ports of entry using the CBP One app. About 1,450 appointments are made a day using the app, which launched last year to allow migrants to make asylum claims.

Immigration advocates worry that Biden’s plan would only increase an already monthslong backlog of migrants waiting for an appointment through the app, especially when immigration authorities do not have an accompanying surge of funding.

It could also be difficult for border officials to quickly remove migrants when many agents are already tasked with helping in shelters and other humanitarian tasks, said Jennie Murray, the president of the National Immigration Forum.

“Customs and Border Protection cannot keep up with apprehensions as it is right now because they don’t have enough personnel so it would cause more disorder,” she said.

Republicans dismissed Biden’s order as nothing more than a “political stunt” meant to show toughened immigration enforcement ahead of the election.

“He tried to convince us all for all this time that there was no way he could possibly fix the mess,” GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson said at a news conference. “Remember that he engineered it.”

In a call organized by Trump’s campaign, Stephen Miller, a senior adviser in Trump’s White House who orchestrated his most polarizing immigration policies, and Tom Homan, former acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Trump administration, said Biden’s order essentially would allow 2,500 people into the country a day and legalize the illegal entry into the U.S.

“The only reason they’re doing this is because of the election,” Homan said. “They’ve had three and a half years to take action and done nothing.”

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said legislation would have been more effective, but “Republican intransigence has forced the president’s hand.”

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Associated Press writers Will Weissert in Washington, Michelle L. Price in New York and Valerie Gonzalez in Reynosa, Mexico, contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is telling lawmakers that President Joe Biden is preparing to sign off on an executive order that would shut down asylum requests at the U.S.-Mexico border once the average number of daily encounters hits 2,500 between ports of entry, with the border reopening only once that number declines to 1,500, according to several people familiar with the discussions.

The impact of the 2,500 figure means that the executive order could go into immediate effect because daily figures are higher than that now.

The Democratic president is expected to unveil the actions — his most aggressive unilateral move yet to control the numbers at the border — at the White House on Tuesday at an event to which border mayors have been invited.

Five people familiar with the discussions on Monday confirmed the 2,500 figure, while two of the people confirmed the 1,500 number. The figures are daily averages over the course of a week. All the people insisted on anonymity to discuss an executive order that is not yet public.

While other border activity, such as trade, is expected to continue, the 1,500 threshold at which the border would reopen for asylum seekers could be hard to reach. The last time the daily average dipped to 1,500 encounters was in July 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Senior White House officials, including chief of staff Jeff Zients and legislative affairs director Shuwanza Goff, have been informing lawmakers on Capitol Hill of details of the planned order ahead of the formal rollout Tuesday. But several questions remain about how the executive order would work, particularly how much cooperation the U.S. would need from Mexican officials to carry out the executive order.

The president has been deliberating for months over how to act on his own after bipartisan legislation to clamp down on asylum at the border collapsed because Republicans defected from the deal en masse at the urging of Donald Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Biden continued to consider executive action even though the number of illegal crossings at the southern border has declined for months, partly because of a stepped-up effort by Mexico.

Biden administration officials had waited until after Mexico’s presidential elections, held Sunday, to move on the U.S. president’s border actions. Mexico elected Claudia Sheinbaum, the nation’s first female leader, and Biden said in a statement Monday that he was committed to “advancing the values and interests of both our nations to the benefit of our peoples.” The two spoke on the phone Monday, although White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to say whether they spoke about the pending order.

“We continue to look at all options on the table,” Jean-Pierre told reporters traveling with Biden on Air Force One on Monday evening.

The executive order will allow Biden to declare that he has pushed the boundaries of his own power after lawmakers, specifically congressional Republicans, killed off what would have been the toughest border and asylum restrictions in some time. Biden’s order is aimed at trying to head off any potential spike in border encounters that could happen later this year, closer to the November elections.

Trump’s campaign said in a statement that the order would not be effective and that if “Biden truly wanted to shut down the border, he could do so with a swipe of the same pen.”

Trump, describing illegal border crossings as an “invasion,” is trying to blame Biden for recent incidents of migrants being charged with violent crimes, though many studies have shown that immigrants typically commit violent crimes at lower rates than those born in the U.S.

For Biden’s executive order, the White House is adopting some policies directly from the bipartisan Senate border deal, including the idea of limiting asylum requests once the encounters hit a certain number. The administration wants to encourage migrants to seek asylum at ports of entry by using the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s CBP One app, which schedules about 1,450 appointments per day.

Administration lawyers have been planning to tap executive powers outlined in Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives a president broad authority to block entry of certain immigrants into the U.S. if it is deemed “detrimental” to the national interest. It is the same legal rationale used by Trump to take some of his toughest actions on migration as president.

That has advocacy groups already preparing to challenge Biden’s immigration order in court.

“We will need to review the (executive order) before making final litigation decisions,” said Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who led several of the most high-profile challenges to Trump’s border policies. “But a policy that effectively shuts down asylum would raise clear legal problems, just as (it) did when the Trump administration tried to end asylum.”

The White House is also sure to encounter vocal resistance from many Democratic lawmakers. California Sen. Alex Padilla, an outspoken critic of the Senate’s earlier border bill, said the pending executive order was “just not the solution we need and it’s very incomplete as a strategy.”

Padilla, who was also briefed by the White House on the proposal, wants an approach that works with countries throughout Latin America to address the poverty and unrest that drives migration to the United States. In recent weeks, Padilla has also pressed the White House for executive actions that benefit immigrants and said the message he has heard in return is, “We’re working on it.”

Biden will unveil his executive order flanked by several border mayors whom the White House invited for the announcement. Texas Mayors John Cowen of Brownsville and Ramiro Garza of Edinburg both confirmed their invitations, and San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s office also said the White House invited the mayor, but he could not attend due to scheduling difficulties.

Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat who said he was briefed on the plan, said he wishes the White House would have taken executive action a long time ago and said cooperation from Mexico would continue to be critical as the administration implements the order.

“If you think about the logistics, where else can they go?” Cuellar said. “If they’re not going to let them in, where do they go? Do they return them (to Mexico), or do they try to deport as many as they can? We did add a lot more money into ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) so they can deport, but the easiest thing, of course, is just send them back to Mexico. You’ve got to have the help of Mexico to make this work.”

Jennifer Babaie, an attorney at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso, Texas, said she would be alarmed if Biden issued formal deportation orders without an opportunity to seek asylum. Advocates worry he may attempt that under the 212(f) provision.

Pandemic-era expulsion authority known as Title 42 had “a silver lining” for migrants because they could try again without fearing legal consequences, Babaie said. But a formal deportation order would expose them to felony prosecution if they attempted again and it would impose bars on legally entering the country in the future.

“This is even more extreme than (Title 42), while still putting people in harm’s way,” Babaie said.

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Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Fatima Hussein on Air Force One contributed to this report.

NASHUA, N.H. (AP) — President Joe Biden, aiming to highlight his legislative accomplishments this election year, traveled to New Hampshire on Tuesday to detail the impact of a law that helps military veterans get benefits as a result of burn pit or other toxic exposure during their service.

In raw numbers, more than 1 million claims have been granted to veterans since Biden signed the so-called PACT Act into law in August 2022, the administration said Tuesday. That amounts to about 888,000 veterans and survivors in all 50 states who have been able to receive disability benefits under the law.

That totals about $5.7 billion in benefits given to veterans and their survivors, according to the administration.

“The president, I think, has believed now for too long, too many veterans who got sick serving and fighting for our country had to fight the VA for their care, too,” Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough told reporters on Monday. PACT stands for “Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics.”

The PACT Act is relatively lower profile compared to the president’s other legislative accomplishments — such as a bipartisan infrastructure law and a sweeping tax, climate and health care package — but it is one that is deeply personal for Biden.

He has blamed burn pits for the brain cancer that killed his son Beau, who served in Iraq, and has vowed repeatedly that he would get the PACT Act into law. Burn pits are where chemicals, tires, plastics, medical equipment and human waste were disposed of on military bases and were used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Before the law, the Department of Veterans Affairs denied 70% of disability claims that involved burn pit exposure. Now, the law requires the VA to assume that certain respiratory illnesses and cancers were related to burn pit or other toxic exposure without veterans having to prove the link.

Before Biden’s planned remarks, he went to a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Merrimack, New Hampshire. The president met there with Lisa Clark, an Air Force veteran who is receiving benefits through the PACT Act because her late husband, Senior Master Sergeant Carl Clark, was exposed to the chemical herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that he was immediately rushing badly needed weaponry to Ukraine as he signed into law a $95 billion war aid measure that also included assistance for Israel, Taiwan and other global hotspots.

The announcement marked an end to the long, painful battle with Republicans in Congress over urgently needed assistance for Ukraine, with Biden promising that U.S. weapons shipment would begin making the way into Ukraine “in the next few hours.”

“We rose to the moment, we came together, and we got it done,” Biden said a White House event to announce the bill signing. “Now we need to move fast, and we are.”

But significant damage has been done to the Biden administration’s effort to help Ukraine repel Russia’s invasion during the funding impasse that dates back to August, when the Democratic president made his first emergency spending request for Ukraine aid. Even with a burst of new weapons and ammunition, it’s unlikely Ukraine will immediately recover after months of setbacks.

Biden immediately approved sending Ukraine $1 billion in military assistance, the first tranche from about $61 billion allocated for Ukraine. The package includes air defense capabilities, artillery rounds, armored vehicles and other weapons to shore up Ukrainian forces who have seen morale sink as Russian President Vladimir Putin has racked up win after win.

Meanwhile, Ukraine for the first time has begun using long-range ballistic missiles provided secretly by the United States, bombing a Russian military airfield in Crimea last week and Russian forces in another occupied area overnight, American officials confirmed Wednesday. The U.S. is providing more of the Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, in the new military aid package, according to one official who was not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Still, longer term, it remains uncertain if Ukraine — after months of losses and sustaining massive damage to its infrastructure — can make enough progress to sustain American political support before burning through the latest influx of money.

“It’s not going in the Ukrainians’ favor in the Donbas, certainly not elsewhere in the country,” said White House national security spokesman John Kirby, referring to the eastern industrial heartland where Ukraine has suffered setbacks. “Mr. Putin thinks he can play for time. So we’ve got to try to make up some of that time.”

Tucked into the measure is a provision that gives TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, nine months to sell it or face a nationwide prohibition in the United States. The Biden administration and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have called the social media site a growing national security concern, which ByteDance denies.

The bill also includes about $26 billion in aid for Israel and a surge of about $1 billion in humanitarian relief for Palestinians in Gaza suffering as the Israel-Hamas war continues. Biden said Israel must ensure the humanitarian aid for Palestinians in bill reaches Gaza “without delay.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson delayed a vote on the supplemental aid package for months as members of his party’s far right wing, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Thomas Massie of Kentucky, threatened to move to oust him if he allowed a vote to send more assistance to Ukraine. Those threats persist.

Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 presidential GOP nominee, has complained that European allies have not done enough for Ukraine. While he stopped short of endorsing the supplemental funding package, his tone has shifted in recent days, acknowledging that Ukraine’s survival is important to the United States.

Indeed, many European leaders have long been nervous that a second Trump presidency would mean decreased U.S. support for Ukraine and for the NATO military alliance. The European anxiety was heightened in February when Trump in a campaign speech warned NATO allies that he “would encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to countries that don’t meet defense spending goals if he returns to the White House.

It was a key moment in the debate over Ukraine spending. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg quickly called out Trump for putting “American and European soldiers at increased risk.” But in reality, the White House maneuvering to win additional funding for Ukraine started months earlier.

Biden, the day after returning from a whirlwind trip to Tel Aviv following Hamas militants’ stunning Oct. 7 attack on Israel, used a rare prime-time address to make his pitch for the supplemental funding.

At the time, the House was in chaos because the Republican majority had been unable to select a speaker to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who had been ousted weeks earlier at the urging of restive legislators on the right.

Far-right Republicans have adamantly opposed sending more money for Ukraine, with the war appearing to have no end in sight. Biden in August requested more than $20 billion to keep aid flowing into Ukraine, but the money was stripped out of a must-pass spending bill.

By late October, Republicans finally settled on Johnson, a low-profile Louisiana Republican whose thinking on Ukraine was opaque, to serve as the next speaker. Biden during his congratulatory call with Johnson urged him to quickly pass Ukraine aid and began a monthslong, largely behind-the-scenes effort to bring the matter to a vote.

In private conversations with Johnson, Biden and White House officials leaned into the stakes for Europe if Ukraine were to fall to Russia. On explicit orders from Biden, White House officials also avoided directly attacking Johnson over the stalled aid.

Biden praised Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., saying in the end they “stepped up and did the right thing.”

“History will remember this moment,” he said.

At frustrating moments during the negotiations, Biden urged his aides to “just keep talking, keep working,” according to a senior administration official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal discussions.

So they did. In a daily meeting convened by White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, the president’s top aides would brainstorm possible ways to better make the case about Ukraine’s dire situation in the absence of aid.

The White House also sought to accommodate Johnson and his various asks. For instance, administration officials at the speaker’s request briefed Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Ralph Norman, R-S.C., two conservatives who were persistent antagonists of Johnson.

In public, the administration deployed a strategy of downgrading intelligence that demonstrated Russia’s efforts to tighten its ties with U.S. adversaries China, North Korea and Iran to fortify Moscow’s defense industrial complex and get around U.S. and European sanctions.

The $61 billion can help triage Ukrainian forces, but Kyiv will need much more for a fight that could last years, military experts say.

Realistic goals for the months ahead for Ukraine — and its allies — include avoiding the loss of major cities, slowing Russia’s momentum and getting to Kyiv additional weaponry that could help them go on the offensive in 2025, said Bradley Bowman, a defense strategy and policy analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington.

“I think Ukrainian success is not guaranteed,” Bowman said, “but Russian success is if we stop supporting Ukraine.”

Biden lamented that the package did not include money to bolster U.S. border security. The White House had proposed including in the package provisions it said would have helped stem the tide of migrants and asylum seekers coming to the U.S. Republicans, however, rejected the proposal at the urging of Trump, who did not want to give Biden the win on an issue that’s been an albatross for the Democratic administration.

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Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor, Haleluya Hadero, Mary Clare Jalonick and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.