New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., the second-oldest member of the House who brought an in-your-face Jersey attitude to the chamber, died Wednesday at age 87.

“It is with deep sadness that we announce that Bill Pascrell Jr., our beloved husband, father, and grandfather, passed away this morning,” Pascrell’s family said in a statement posted on social media. “As our United States Representative, Bill fought to his last breath to return to the job he cherished and to the people he loved. Bill lived his entire life in Paterson and had an unwavering love for the city he grew up in and served. He is now at peace after a lifetime devoted to our great nation America.”

Pascrell had been hospitalized at St. Joseph’s University Medical Center in his hometown of Paterson since July 14. His office said he checked himself in because of a fever but two weeks later said he had a “setback” and needed breathing assistance. He was discharged, but days later his health declined again and he checked into into Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey.

It’s the second time this year a sitting New Jersey lawmaker has died in office. In April, Democratic Rep. Donald Payne Jr. died nearly three weeks after having a heart attack. The death of Pascrell also represents another loss of power and seniority for New Jersey in the Capitol after Sen. Bob Menendez, the once-influential chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was run out of the Senate after being found guilty of corruption.

The 14-term Pascrell was poised to become the oldest House member in 2025, after California Democratic Rep. Grace Napolitano retired. He’d won a primary in June amid backlash to his pro-Israel stance in the Israel-Hamas war and was expected to defeat his Republican opponent in November.

Pascrell was a voluble presence at home in New Jersey or in Washington. Whether it was a press conference to restore a popular tax deduction or making the case to impeach former President Donald Trump, Pascrell could be counted on to deliver an enthusiastic — and usually lengthy — speech.

William James Pascrell Jr. was born on Jan. 25, 1937, and grew up in Paterson, N.J., the city founded by Alexander Hamilton that collapsed into poverty and violence with the end of industrialism. Pascrell, who grew up on the city’s south side, remained there for most of his life.

A baseball enthusiast who said he unsuccessfully tried out for the Phillies, Pascrell played on the Democrats’ congressional baseball team for years and later coached it. In a 2016 interview, he showed a reporter a photo of his youth baseball league and said he would “eat a little dirt before every game to try to scare the other team.” (In 2019, he selected an all-time New Jersey baseball team for the New Jersey Globe, featuring such notables as Yogi Berra, Larry Doby and Sparky Lyle.)

After graduating from Fordham University in 1961, he spent a year in the Army and another five in the Army Reserve. He was a public high school teacher and served as president of the Paterson Board of Education in the late 1970s and early 80s before getting elected to the state Assembly in 1988.

In 1990, while serving in the legislature, Pascrell was elected mayor of Paterson. He spent two terms leading the city before running for the House and defeating incumbent Republican Bill Martini in 1996.

Pascrell has cruised to reelection every two years since then, with few real challenges. He faced perhaps his biggest threat against incumbent Democrat Steve Rothman after redistricting in 2012. The longtime friends and House colleagues waged one of the country’s most contentious intra-party primaries at the time, with Pascrell accusing Rothman of being weak-kneed for challenging him instead of running against a Republican in his newly redrawn district and Rothman questioning Pascrell’s progressive credentials.

Pascrell won in a 22-point blowout.

He enjoyed strong support in the new 9th Congressional District, consisting mostly of towns in Bergen and Passaic counties — areas with significant Jewish and Muslim populations. But after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza, Pascrell took intense heat from Arab Americans over his steadfast support of Israel.

Mohamed T. Khairullah, New Jersey’s longest-serving Muslim mayor, ran against Pascrell in the June primary because of his resistance to a cease-fire and support for military aid to Israel. Despite the backlash, Pascrell easily defeated Khairullah, capturing 76 percent of the vote, and was strongly favored to defeat Republican Billy Prempeh in the heavily Democratic district in November.

As a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, Pascrell spent years trying to obtain the tax returns of Donald Trump during his presidency. The former president was also a common punching bag for Pascrell, whose social media feed often skewered Trump’s policy record and served up regular reminders that he is a convicted felon. After Joe Biden defeated Trump in November 2020, Pascrell called for “the eventual prosecution” of Trump and “his enablers for their many crimes against the United States.”

One of Pascrell’s other high-profile causes in recent years was ticket prices. He pushed for more than a decade to regulate the live event ticket industry and bring down prices, but his legislation languished.

“A fan shouldn’t have to sell a kidney or mortgage a house to see their favorite performer or team. At long last, it is time to create rules for fair ticketing in this country and my legislation will do exactly that for all the fans,” Pascrell said.

Democrats have until Aug. 29 to select a replacement for Pascrell on the ballot. The decision will be made by Democratic committee members in the 9th District’s towns in Passaic, Bergen and Hudson Counties.

Two high-profile Democrats had made moves to run for Pascrell’s seat in this election but ultimately opted not to: Paterson Mayor André Sayegh and Assemblymember Shavonda Sumter, a Democrat from Paterson. They are both considered potential candidates, along with Assemblymember Benjie Wimberly and others. It remains to be seen whether Bergen County Democrats, whose county has a large share in the district, will field a candidate.

George Santos, who spun lies about his life into an 11-month stint in Congress, pleaded guilty Monday to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in a case that led to his expulsion from office and the admission that he’d allowed ambition to cloud his judgment.

The former representative, 36, is likely to spend at least six years in prison and owes more than $370,000 in restitution. His guilty plea in federal court on Long Island came weeks before the case was to go to trial. He is to remain free on bond until he is sentenced on Feb. 7.

“I betrayed the trust of my constituents and supporters. I deeply regret my conduct,” the New York Republican said, his voice trembling as he entered the plea.

Santos — elected in 2022 after bandying falsehoods about his wealth and background, including a lie that his mother perished in the 9/11 attacks — told reporters outside court that his political ambitions had led him “to make decisions that were unethical.”

“Pleading guilty is a step I never imagined I’d take, but it is a necessary one because it is the right thing to do,” Santos said. “It’s not only a recognition of my misrepresentation to others, but more profoundly, it is my own recognition of the lies I told myself over these past years.”

U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said that in pleading guilty, Santos had told the truth “after years of telling lies.”

“And that truth is he is a criminal,” Peace said.

Santos was indicted on felony charges that he stole from political donors, used campaign contributions to pay for personal expenses, lied to Congress about his wealth and collected unemployment benefits while actually working.

Peace also said that in addition to the crimes Santos pleaded guilty to, he also admitted to “a litany of other crimes for which the court will hold him accountable at sentencing.”

Among them: admitting that he stole multiple people’s credit card numbers and charged them for his campaign, that he tricked donors into giving money to a bogus nonprofit and used the cash to buy designer clothing, and that he fabricated his personal wealth in a financial disclosure report he submitted to Congress.

Santos was expelled from the U.S. House after an ethics investigation found “overwhelming evidence” he had broken the law and exploited his public position for his own profit.

The case has been set for trial in early September. If that had happened, federal prosecutors said Monday that they were prepared to call some 40 witnesses, including members of Santos’ campaign, employers and family members.

Santos was once touted as a rising political star after he flipped the suburban district that covers the affluent North Shore of Long Island and a slice of the New York City borough of Queens in 2022.

But his life story began unraveling even before he was sworn into office. At the time, reports emerged that he had lied about having a career at top Wall Street firms and a college degree along with other questions surrounding his biography.

New questions then emerged about his campaign funds.

He was first indicted on federal charges in May 2023, but refused to resign from office.

Santos had previously maintained his innocence, though he said in an interview in December that a plea deal with prosecutors was “not off the table.”

Asked if he was afraid of going to prison, he told CBS 2 at the time: “I think everybody should be afraid of going to jail, it’s not a pretty place and uh, I definitely want to work very hard to avoid that as best as possible.”

Separately Monday, in Manhattan federal court, Judge Denise Cote tossed out a lawsuit in which Santos claimed that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, ABC and Disney committed copyright infringement and unjustly enriched themselves at his expense by using videos he made on the Cameo app for a “Jimmy Kimmel Live” segment. The judge said it was clear that Kimmel used the clips, which were also posted to YouTube, for purposes of criticism and commentary, which is fair use.

Santos had begun selling personalized videos on Cameo in December shortly after his ouster from Congress. He subsequently launched, then quickly abandoned, a longshot bid to return to Congress as an independent earlier this year.

In a radio interview that aired Sunday, Santos said he has taken comfort in being a “somewhat private civilian” again.

“I really don’t miss the rubber chicken dinners and the rah-rah-rah parties and fundraisers,” he said of his former life.

With a criminal trial looming, he had said in the WABC interview that he was “terrified.”

“This is not absolutely an easy process to go through. It really hurts and it really messes with your psychological health,” he told host Cindy Adams.

As the trial date neared in recent weeks, Santos had sought to have a partially anonymous jury, with his lawyers arguing in court papers that “the mere risk of public ridicule could influence the individual jurors ability to decide Santos’ case solely on the facts and law as presented in Court.”

He also wanted potential jurors to fill out a written questionnaire gauging their opinions of him. His lawyers argued the survey was needed because “for all intents and purposes, Santos has already been found guilty in the court of public opinion.”

Judge Joanna Seybert agreed to keep jurors’ identities public but said no to the questionnaire.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, had been seeking to admit as evidence some of the financial falsehoods Santos told during his campaign, including that he’d worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs and that he had operated a family-run firm with approximately $80 million in assets.

Two Santos campaign aides previously pleaded guilty to crimes related to the former congressman’s campaign.

His ex-treasurer, Nancy Marks, pleaded guilty in October to a fraud conspiracy charge, implicating Santos in an alleged scheme to embellish his campaign finance reports with a fake loan and fake donors. A lawyer for Marks said then that his client would be willing to testify against Santos if asked.

Sam Miele, a former fundraiser for Santos, pleaded guilty a month later to a federal wire fraud charge, admitting he impersonated a high-ranking congressional aide while raising money for Santos’ campaign.

House Republican investigators accused President Joe Biden of engaging in “impeachable conduct” as part of a long-awaited report. It’s unlikely to change a reality the party has faced for months: They don’t have the votes to impeach him.

The 291-page report released Monday by the Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means committees comes roughly eight months after Republicans formalized their impeachment inquiry against the president. Their sweeping investigations, largely focused on the business deals of Biden’s family members, have gone on even longer, informally starting around the time they first took the House majority in January 2023.

Republicans on the committees are accusing Biden of two offenses they argue meet the bar for impeachable conduct: abuse of power and obstruction. They’re the same charges that House Democrats cited in the 2019 impeachment against then-President Donald Trump — an inquiry frequently mentioned in the House GOP report.

“The Constitution’s remedy for a President’s flagrant abuse of office is clear: impeachment by the House of Representatives and removal by the Senate,” the committees write in the report, adding they are releasing the report to the House “for its evaluation and consideration of appropriate next steps.”

Even as Republicans noted on Monday that the inquiry remains ongoing, the report marks a soft end for the impeachment effort; two leading investigators told POLITICO last month that their probes had largely wrapped up. Some Judiciary Committee Republicans have pushed to hold public hearings on impeachment articles, but Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) didn’t commit to that step in a recent interview, instead indicating the decision about where to go next is up to the larger conference.

Not holding an impeachment vote on the House floor would constitute a historical anomaly: Every formal presidential impeachment inquiry in modern times has led to an impeachment vote — except in the case of Richard Nixon, who resigned from office before a vote could happen. It also risks irritating the party’s base, which has pushed for a quicker impeachment against the president, though that focus has since shifted to Kamala Harris.

But Republicans have been dozens of votes short of impeaching Biden for months. Much of their investigation, and Monday’s report, focused on business deals and money received by Hunter and James Biden, as well as Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents and the years-long federal investigation into his son. Investigators, for example, say they traced $27 million in payments to Biden family members and their associates from foreign entities. They also delved deeply into “loans” received by Hunter and James Biden, the president’s son and brother, respectively.

Republicans uncovered examples of Hunter and James Biden leaning on their last name and their connection to Joe Biden to bolster their own influence. For example, some former Hunter Biden associates, in closed-door interviews, told lawmakers that Hunter Biden would put his father on speakerphone during meetings with potential business partners, though they said that the conversation was limited to pleasantries. In other instances, witnesses recalled Joe Biden stopping by dinners or lunches — but that business wasn’t discussed at those moments.

Much of Republicans’ abuse of power charge focuses on Hunter and James Biden’s business deals or loans they received, arguing that they likely wouldn’t have happened unless Joe Biden had been in office. The three Bidens, and some of their former business associates, have said repeatedly that Joe Biden was not involved in the business agreements.

For their second offense, obstruction, Republicans focused on both their own sprawling investigation and the years-long federal probe into Hunter Biden. IRS whistleblowers have accused Biden administration officials of stymying the latter — allegations repeatedly rebuffed by Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel David Weiss. Republicans also referenced their ongoing court battle to try to force the Justice Department to hand over audio of Joe Biden’s interview with former special counsel Robert Hur, rather than just the transcripts.

But while they poked holes in previous statements by Joe Biden and the White House, Republicans have struggled to find the proverbial smoking gun that would garner the near-unanimous GOP support needed to impeach the president. Investigators, in Monday’s report, argue that they don’t need to show evidence that Joe Biden committed a crime — but some of their skeptical colleagues have said that is the bar leaders need to clear to earn their impeachment vote.

The impeachment efforts have drawn fierce scrutiny from congressional Democrats, the White House and even some current and former GOP colleagues. In a preview of their likely response to the report, Democrats have for months touted the investigation as an ultimate exoneration of Joe Biden, since it is likely to end without action.

“I think we did our job. We followed the money,” Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a recent interview.

And he repeated a frequent argument from GOP leaders: That they only formalized the impeachment inquiry late last year “to try to have better standing in court to get documents. It didn’t have anything to do with impeachment.”

New Jersey Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. is once again in the hospital, just days after being discharged following a lengthy stay and less than three months before Election Day.

Pascrell, 87, was discharged from St. Joseph’s in Paterson Wednesday following a three-week stay for a respiratory infection and fever, at one point being placed on breathing assistance. He checked out and entered a rehabilitation facility but checked into St. Barnabas in Livingston on Sunday evening.

“He is now stable,” chief of staff Ben Rich said. “We will provide updates whenever possible and remain hopeful he will be able to resume his rehabilitation soon.”

The congressmember — the second oldest current member of the House and set to be the oldest next session if he wins reelection — easily won the Democratic primary in June and is seeking a 15th term in the House.

Pascrell also had heart surgery in 2020 to relieve blocked arteries.

Even before Pascrell’s recent health problems, his advanced age led to Democrats positioning themselves to run for his seat, though two high-profile potential Democratic contestants — state Assemblymember Shavonda Sumter and Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh — felt out runs this year before ultimately opting not to.

Prospect Park Mayor Mohamed Khairullah challenged Pascrell in the primary largely over the war in Gaza, but Pascrell won 77 percent of the vote.

Pascrell in November faces his third straight challenge from Republican Billy Prempeh, whom he defeated by 12 points in 2022. Though Pascrell’s district is less Democratic-dominated than before boundaries were redrawn in redistricting, no major publications that rate House elections have flagged the race as competitive.

It’s not yet clear whether Pascrell’s continued health problems will lead to pressure for him to step aside. The deadline to replace Pascrell on the ballot is August 29.

Pascrell’s hospital stay was not widely known in political circles until early Monday. Reached by phone on Monday morning, Passaic County Democratic Chair John Currie was shocked to hear the news.

Currie said he was relieved to hear he was in stable condition and expressed support for Pascrell so long as he chooses to seek reelection.

“I am confident, and until I have a conversation with him, I am 100 percent supportive of his candidacy,” Currie said. “He’s a reasonable man. We’ve worked together for a long time. And yes, I’m going to support him. If he’s not able to run, he will say so.”

If Pascrell opted to drop his reelection bid, his party’s nominee would be selected by Democratic committee members from the district’s towns in Passaic, Bergen and Hudson counties.

Sumter, in a brief interview Monday, said there was “no talk of any changes” to changing Pascrell as the nominee and said “right now we’re all just praying for his health and strength.”

Daniel Han contributed to this report.

Progressive Democrats just watched pro-Israel super PACs spend jaw-dropping sums to wipe out two top liberals in Congress. And leaders fear they have no way to stop it from happening again in 2026.

Those groups, chiefly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s super PAC, spent a combined $25 million on ads to defeat Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) this summer in what became the two most expensive House primaries ever. As a result, two more mainstream Democrats, George Latimer in New York and Wesley Bell in Missouri, are advancing in safe blue districts rather than two stalwart progressive voices.

After both Bowman and Bush crumbled under that avalanche of spending, prompted by their criticism of Israel in the country’s war with Hamas, progressive Democrats have awoken to a bleak new reality that could haunt them for years to come: They have no organized way to counter that kind of money. And they fear AIPAC and allied groups will be more empowered to take on even bigger targets next cycle and beyond because they know their strategy works.

“I think they smell success,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said of AIPAC in an interview with POLITICO. “The point is not just them going after Jamaal and Cori, which is terrible. It is the intimidating presence they have over every member of Congress. … It bothers me that there hasn’t been more outrage.”

In the days after Bush’s defeat last week, senior liberals in Congress, including Sanders, have begun to reckon with the size of the problem. Until then, progressives were not sure if AIPAC’s success against Bowman, who had plenty of his own political flaws unrelated to the Middle East, could be replicated. Then Bush’s loss rattled progressives even more.

What Sanders and others have grimly surmised is that they have no way to match AIPAC’s power, with no big-money fundraising machine and no powerful nationwide door-knocking operation. And while progressives boast large numbers and significant power in Congress, they fear that those pro-Israel super PACs will continue to target high-profile lawmakers one by one, as well as quash new liberal candidates in open seats who the PACs also see as overly critical of Israel. That could make it harder to grow their ranks and potentially silence those already elected, particularly on support for Palestine, a galvanizing issue for younger liberal voters especially.

“The movement is going to have to do some deep soul searching,” said Nina Turner, a prominent progressive who lost her own House primary three years ago to an AIPAC-backed challenger. “The progressive movement has to show up in a deeper way. It did not.”

Turner, along with other progressive Democrats, say the left has no choice but to start organizing their own counterweight specifically focused on combating the pro-Israel money, adding: “So the movement itself is going to have to adjust very quickly.”

United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s super PAC, firmly pushed back on the idea that their spending is at odds with the left.

“We have been proud to support progressive champions who are pro-Israel like Latimer and Bell,” said Patrick Dorton, a spokesperson for the group. “These are candidates that will support the progressive agenda in Congress.”

The reckoning hasn’t been universal. Some progressive operatives dismissed the losses as minor setbacks to a movement that has been on the rise since 2016, and privately argued that Bowman and Bush were weak politically and therefore more likely to draw challengers. They argue that some liberal incumbents need to do better at deepening relationships in their districts and raising their own funds — as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) have done — to ward off serious opponents.

But others worried that many on the left are not clear-eyed about the full scope of the problem. Some believe the way the war in Gaza has galvanized pro-Israel donors is a dire threat to the future of the movement.

“There’s reason for them to be panicked,” said Mark Mellman, the president of Democratic Majority for Israel, which joined AIPAC in opposing Bowman and Bush and also played in open-seat races. “The Squad has been diminished. That’s a fact, and we prevented more people who would have joined it from getting elected.”

Beyond Bowman and Bush

The first truly powerful pro-Israel groups came on the scene in earnest in 2021 with a blockbuster special election in northeast Ohio.

The front-runner was Turner, a former co-chair of Sanders’ presidential campaign who was known for her colorful language. She led in polls and fundraising for much of the race. But Mellman’s group swooped in with a $1 million infusion of cash to boost her opponent, now-Rep. Shontel Brown, over the finish line.

“No question that the Brown-Turner race was a turning point,” Mellman said.

With a blueprint set, AIPAC joined Democratic Majority for Israel in earnest in the 2022 midterms. Both focused on primary races, where their money would go even further. They had the biggest success playing in open seats and electing members like now-Reps. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) and Don Davis (D-N.C.).

This year, they turned their sights to incumbents. And the war in Gaza turbocharged their donor base, allowing them to drop historic amounts of money into congressional races. Dorton, the spokesperson for AIPAC’s super PAC, called the Oct. 7 attacks “a turning point for pro-Israel donors and activists in America.”

It’s not just the mega-successful takedowns against Bowman and Bush: The pro-Israel groups quickly realized they can choke off potential progressive additions by spending against them in safe-seat primaries. Those races don’t always get national attention but thwart attempts to grow the liberal caucus. Pro-Israel donors boosted Sarah Elfreth in an open Maryland House district, and also spent in an open Arizona seat where the race is headed for a recount.

“It shapes who gets elected as Democrats in Congress. It’s bigger than any one race, it’s about — what does the Democratic caucus as a whole look like?” said a progressive campaign operative, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “The Democratic party as a whole needs to have a larger conversation about, ‘Are we gonna call this out?’”

‘AIPAC is gonna go after the wounded bear cub’

Even progressive Democrats admit that both Bowman and Bush had serious political liabilities. Bowman’s was especially obvious: He pleaded guilty to setting off a false fire alarm in the Capitol complex last year. Bush, meanwhile, is under federal investigation after hiring her now-husband to provide her security and paying him out of a campaign account.

Other high-profile progressives, including what’s known as the Squad, have been careful to raise enough cash and build enough relationships back home to stave off challengers. AIPAC decided not to spend, for instance, against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in her primary on Tuesday after they failed to land a strong challenger against her.

This cycle, Omar is facing the same challenger but is expected to easily win her race after shoring up her own political operation. After a near-miss in 2022, Omar strengthened ties in her district, hired a strong campaign team and raised serious cash — a whopping $6.8 million as of late July.

Another rising progressive, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), strategically avoided a well-funded challenge, in part, by working with Jewish communities in her district. She bowed out of an event with a Muslim group after backlash over antisemitic comments made by other speakers. But Omar, Tlaib and others are only safe because the pro-Israel groups couldn’t land challengers they felt were worth backing.

“They’ll pick, and they’ll choose,” Sanders said, summarizing AIPAC’s strategy. And he warned it would have a chilling effect on Democrats willing to talk about sensitive issues — particularly against Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“How many people do you think are prepared to get involved in that?” Sanders said. “Every politician in the world has liabilities and $10 million can accentuate those liabilities.”

One Democratic leadership aide, granted anonymity to speak frankly, summed it up like this: “AIPAC is gonna go after the wounded bear cub.”

What’s next?

No progressive expects they can compete with the flood of AIPAC cash dollar for dollar. Some are playing the long game — angling for campaign finance reform and trying to label AIPAC as a vehicle for Republicans to meddle in Democratic primaries.

“The goal is not to say: ‘How can we scale up to $20 million so then we can have this disgusting, destructive effect on our democracy through these elections,’” said Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for the progressive PAC Justice Democrats. “At a certain point someone needs to be an adult in the room and say: ‘This is bad for our democracy.’”

Some, like Sanders, have tried to get their party to completely ban super PACs in Democratic primaries. But a solution like that is years, if not decades, away from coming to fruition. And the pro-Israel groups are already gearing up for 2026. Other progressives have tried to get more organized and fight back with groups that already exist, like the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ own PAC.

But there’s a big — and awkward — constraint. The CPC is one of the largest member groups on the Hill, with nearly 100 lawmakers. But “progressive” can be a wide spectrum. The group includes members like Brown, the Ohio candidate who defeated Turner with help from pro-Israel donors. And it might just welcome the two Democrats who beat Bowman and Bush this fall: Latimer and Bell, respectively.

“We have a criteria. And if he meets the criteria, I don’t see why not,” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) told POLITICO after Latimer beat Bowman earlier this summer. “Obviously, anyone who wants to be a progressive in Congress is welcome in the caucus.”

Brakkton Booker and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report. 

President Joe Biden is frustrated that Barack Obama wouldn’t tell him to his face that he should leave the race. He’s angry with Nancy Pelosi and views her as ruthless for ushering him out the door. And he’s still miffed at the role Chuck Schumer played, too.

Biden has told his closest aides and associates that he is coming to terms with his decision to bow out of the presidential race last month, but still harbors some frustration toward the members of his own party he believes pushed him out, according to three people familiar with Biden’s thinking who are not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

Pelosi has been at the forefront of late, as the former speaker is on an extensive book tour and has been publicly explaining her part in nudging Biden off the top of the ticket. The president is still smarting but has told people in recent days that he grudgingly respects Pelosi’s actions.

“She did what she had to do” in order to give Democrats the best chance to win in November, Biden told one of the people, adding that Pelosi “cares about the party,” not about feelings.

The lingering tension between Democratic leaders underscores the historic tumult that has gripped their party in the last six weeks — contrasting with the unity Democrats hope to present at their convention next week. Biden’s faltering debate performance in late June convinced Pelosi that he could not win and she helped orchestrate an unprecedented mutiny against not only a sitting president of her own party, but also someone who had been a friend for decades.

“President Biden is passionately focused on delivering more historic, concrete results for the American people every single day of his term — by continuing to strengthen the middle class, continuing to stand up for our freedoms, and continuing to bring violent crime to its lowest level in half a century,” said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates. “The President has spoken to his decision to put country above self and unite his party, as well as the stakes of this moment. His attention is on the future, not the past.”

A senior White House official, also granted anonymity to describe private conversations, said Biden views Pelosi as “ruthless” and willing to set aside long-term relationships in order to keep her party in power — and, most importantly, to prevent Republican nominee Donald Trump from returning to the White House.

“That’s who she has always been,” the person added.

Pelosi and Biden have not spoken since he stepped away. And the president’s anger flashed to the surface during a televised interview that aired this weekend when he namechecked the former speaker as he explained why he quit the race.

“And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic,” Biden told CBS. “You’d be interviewing me about why did Nancy Pelosi say, why did so — and — and I thought it’d be a real distraction.”

Biden also harbors some resentment that Obama — his friend and former boss — did not call him directly to voice his concerns about the campaign in the aftermath of the disastrous Atlanta debate in late June.

While Obama tweeted in support of Biden immediately after the debate, he then went publicly quiet. The former president did not try to stir up a movement to dislodge Biden from the top of the ticket, but he also didn’t quell one, much to the dismay of some of those closest to Biden, according to the three people.

Biden’s relationship with the former president has always been more complicated than it appears. The two men are personally close — Obama even offered to pay Biden’s mortgage after his son Beau’s death in 2015 — but political tensions have formed.

Biden has long thought that Obama’s staff looked down upon him and the president’s aides still bristle when Obama allies like David Axelrod or the Pod Save America cast criticize the incumbent. Many people around Biden were rankled when, in 2016, Obama made clear he favored Hillary Clinton to succeed him and not his own vice president.

But Biden’s inner circle believes Pelosi was the decisive voice in pushing him out.

His allies thought that, after nearly two weeks of trying to reassure fellow Democrats, his candidacy was on track to be salvaged the morning of July 10. But that was when Pelosi made a now-infamous appearance on “Morning Joe,” repeatedly making clear that she did not support Biden continuing his candidacy. The president’s aides believe that opened the door for a host of other Democrats and donors to follow suit.

Moreover, Biden’s inner circle told him the day before he dropped out that if he persisted in the race they believed that Pelosi was going to take her misgivings public — including her belief that Trump would defeat him — which would have been deeply humiliating for a sitting president, two of the people said.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday said that Biden “respects” Pelosi and insisted that he has “no hard feelings.”

Some White House senior aides also expressed private irritation after Pelosi, in an interview last week with The New Yorker, said she was unimpressed with the Biden political operation despite its 2020 victory. She later couched those comments, saying she had “praise” for Biden and his political operation for winning the 2020 election.

Pelosi has repeatedly said in recent interviews — mainly to promote her new book titled “The Art of Power” — that she didn’t call anyone but the president in the three weeks prior to Biden’s departure from the race. However, Pelosi took calls from rank-and-file Democrats who sought her advice in the days following Biden’s debate performance and before he dropped out of the race, multiple people familiar with her conversations told POLITICO at the time.

Pelosi has since publicly and privately praised the new Democratic ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, which has surged in the polls and revitalized their party. Still, in an interview with former White House press secretary Jen Psaki for her show on MSNBC, Pelosi defended her relationship with the president.

“In our family, we have three generations of love for Joe Biden. My husband and I — of course, we’ve known him for a very long time — respect him, love him and Jill. He and Jill are so remarkable, and their family. Our kids have always loved them. I had pictures with him from our children growing up and now our grandchildren growing up,” she said.

During her book tour, Pelosi has also been publicly pushing for Biden to be added to Mount Rushmore, which many Democrats privately indicate they see as her attempt to make amends.

Some Democrats privately muse that as Pelosi worked behind the scenes to have Biden step aside, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was able to stay above the fray within his caucus as rank-and-file members shared their concerns about the top of the ticket.

After Trump defeated Clinton in 2016, Pelosi became her party’s bulwark against the marauding president, and she spent two years repeatedly standing up to him and, at times, taunting him. She’s widely seen as the leader who held down the fort against Trump, many Democrats say, until their party’s primary process began ahead of the 2020 race. And she has maintained her outsized influence even after stepping away from leading her caucus.

In another interview earlier this month, Pelosi said “I hope so” when asked if her relationship with Biden is OK.

“You’d have to ask him,” Pelosi told CNN’s Dana Bash.

While Biden and Pelosi remain estranged, the president did speak to Schumer on the day he dropped out, according to a person familiar with the phone call. Biden has expressed less frustration with Schumer, whom he does not perceive as someone at the forefront of the move to dislodge him. Still, he was miffed that the leader of the Senate — an institution he reveres — also played a hand in applying pressure, according to two of the people.

“President Biden is a patriot and set an example for all Americans by once again putting his country above all else,” Schumer said in a statement in response to a request for comment on this story. “We were all proud to work alongside him to achieve an historic legislative record that will leave him with an indelible legacy as president.”

Congressional Democrats are largely content to wait until after the election for Kamala Harris to drill down on her policy agenda.

As she picks up the mantle from President Joe Biden and heads into an energized convention next week, the Democratic nominee is slowly rolling out some policy proposals and disavowing some of her former positions. But mostly, she’s leaning into a general positive message that has wider appeal, specifically because it’s light on the details.

Democratic lawmakers call it a savvy strategy. They’d rather lay out a specific plan post-November, when a potential President-elect Harris would have to staff up her administration and determine her governing priorities.

“She doesn’t need to negotiate against herself. We’ve got the biggest possible tent right now,” said Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-N.H.), chair of the centrist New Democrats. “I don’t think there’s a real strong reason for her to try to weed out any points of view right now.”

It’s an advantageous but incredibly rare position for any presidential nominee. Harris skipped the typically policy-heavy competitive primary process, despite not being an incumbent president, due to Biden’s late dropout. Her own party is hesitant to demand any policy goals that could blunt her momentum, but it’s still a risky strategy. Republicans have repeatedly brought up her more liberal positions from the 2020 presidential primary as they try to paint her as an out-of-touch progressive, an approach they’ll almost certainly continue into November.

Harris has renounced some of those ideas, such as a fracking ban, and started to tease parts of her economic policy, including expected efforts to tackle grocery prices, housing and health care costs. She’s also made another major commitment: eliminating taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers, an idea former President Donald Trump mentioned in June.

Still, Democrats feel little urgency for the Harris campaign to put out detailed new policy documents that could easily become further campaign ad fodder for the right, especially as Trump has struggled to hit her effectively over the last month. They’ve seen polls, in the presidential race and down ballot, shift in their favor after Harris’ rise, and believe her lack of fidelity to certain policy positions will continue to be an asset to elections across the country.

“They have very little knowledge about who she is, what her job has actually been,” said one battleground-district House Democrat, granted anonymity to speak candidly, of voters’ attitudes toward Harris. “They know Trump. They know what his policies are. They don’t know Kamala. And so Kamala has a ton of room right now to define herself.”

Some progressives are calling for more clarity on her positions, especially as Democrats prepare to unveil their platform at the convention next week. But even those voices aren’t hitting Harris hard — yet.

“While we’ve seen some steps in the right direction from Kamala Harris, most of that has been messaging,” said Waleed Shahid, a progressive strategist who advises the “Uncommitted” movement. “The main thing that we’re asking for is to stop sending American weapons to the Israeli government’s assault on Gaza and to indicate in some way that as vice president she would have a different view.”

But, illustrating her long runway within the party, immigration advocacy group leaders say they can wait until after Harris becomes president to discuss a more concrete platform on the major issue.

“We’re hoping to work with her on some more detailed plans about how to help folks with [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals],” said Immigration Hub’s Kerri Talbot. “But I think she’s already really well aware and familiar with those issues. So we’re looking forward to implementing those programs.”

Harris’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Most Democrats acknowledge that Harris will need to round out her platform as the campaign continues, even if she doesn’t need to release an issue-by-issue plan. Former Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who lost a Senate bid to GOP vice-presidential nominee JD Vance in 2022 and ran against Harris in the 2020 presidential primary, said that “at some point” Harris will need to lay out more policy priorities but shouldn’t feel pressure to do so yet.

“She’ll probably need to do something on inflation and getting costs down, but she has the re-industrialization already,” he said, referencing Biden administration accomplishments like the Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan legislation aimed at boosting the domestic semiconductor industry.

And one top progressive, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), has publicly pushed Harris to flesh out her economic policy platform to win over working-class voters. He said in a statement to POLITICO that the vice president should be “proud to run on” the administration’s economic record, adding: “As we have seen in poll after poll, running on policies that benefit working-class voters is also good politics.”

Elected officials are hoping an intentionally fuzzy approach on immigration, particularly, could help shield them from GOP attacks on the hot-button issue. The battleground Democrat predicted that the “broadest possible take” on immigration that focuses on values without “firm commitments” could help Harris recover ground with Hispanic votes.

The buoyancy provided by the top-of-the-ticket change has many other Democrats feeling more optimistic about their chances in November.

“Folks are very excited across the country, whether they’re going to the convention or not. They’ve seen just an incredible turnout of volunteers, as folks go out canvassing, just a lot of enthusiasm and energy in our battleground races across the country,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), chair of House Democrats’ campaign arm.

Other Democrats framed the lack of policy specifics less as a purposeful choice and more about the tenor of the election. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), said that policy was taking a backseat because the “contrast” between Harris and Trump was what was ultimately going to be most decisive in the race.

“It’s really about the excitement of having a ticket that is more youthful, that is more about the future, that we feel good about, and that I think transcends any individual policy that may come out,” he said.

And as some in the party would privately prefer that Harris add some more heft to her policy positions, especially on issues where the GOP is attacking her, there’s a widespread Democratic argument that Trump hasn’t been fully forthcoming on his own platform.

Officials with the controversial Project 2025 have said they were laying the policy groundwork for Trump’s potential second term, but the former president has publicly rejected any connection to the group. Trump also doesn’t generally detail rigorous policy positions but, unlike Harris, Trump can point to his first term as president.

“We will be trying to influence policy, obviously, but … you don’t see the Trump campaign coming out with policy papers,” Kuster said. “We’re up against total chaos on the other side.”

Anthony Adragna contributed to this report.

House Republicans are setting their sights on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Democrats’ vice presidential candidate — the latest indication that they are using their slim majority to go after former President Donald Trump’s political opponents.

Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) on Friday announced that he is opening an investigation into Walz’s work related to China, including coordinating student trips, and sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray requesting a swath of documents and any correspondence with Walz related to China.

“Americans should be deeply concerned that Governor Walz, Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential running mate, has a longstanding and cozy relationship with China. …The American people deserve to fully understand how deep Governor Walz’s relationship with China goes,” Comer said in a statement.

Walz in 1989 went to China as part of a teach-abroad program. He also helped coordinate trips for students and has visited China more than 30 times — two details highlighted by Comer as part of the groundwork for his investigation.

Walz’s work related to China has become an early point of GOP criticism as the party recalibrates its November strategy toward Walz and Vice President Kamala Harris. But Walz has also been critical of China, particularly on human rights. During his time in Congress he served on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which focuses on the issue.

“Throughout his career, Governor Walz has stood up to the CCP, fought for human rights … and democracy, and always put American jobs and manufacturing first. Republicans are twisting basic facts and desperately lying to distract from the Trump-Vance agenda: praising dictators, and sending American jobs to China,” Teddy Tschann, a spokesperson for Walz, said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Oversight Committee Democrats in a statement called Comer’s investigation “nothing more than a political stunt to aid the former president, while he ignores Trump’s cozy relationships with dictators, including China’s Xi.”

Comer has launched sweeping investigations into Chinese entities as part of his work as chair of the House Oversight Committee, which has a broad jurisdictional lane. But he’s also used the panel to delve into the party’s political opponents. While he told POLITICO that he wouldn’t be calling Harris in, he recently requested documents related to her work on the U.S.-Mexico border.

His most high-profile investigation — co-leading an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden that largely focused on the business deals of his family members — has quietly wrapped after months. Republicans, however, don’t have the votes to impeach Biden, after investigators failed to convince dozens of their colleagues that Biden had committed a crime or an impeachable offense.