JOHN YANG: Tonight on PBS News Weekend, President Biden drops out of the presidential race amid growing concerns from those in his own party and beyond.

MAN: I'm just very hopeful that this torch is passed to a new generation to allow President Biden be the president.

I know he is and can be.

JOHN YANG: Then as Democrats look ahead to picking a new candidate, how will he navigate election laws?

And Judy Woodruff reflects on this remarkable moment in American history.

(BREAK) JOHN YANG: Good evening.

I'm John Yang.

With support from Democrats are rolling by the day President Biden says he's dropping out of the presidential race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to be his party's nominee.

And a letter posted on his account on X, he wrote, while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term.

Vice President Harris issued a statement saying, my intention is to earn and win this nomination.

Mr. Biden said he addressed the nation leader this week to more fully explain his decision.

For now he remains in isolation at his beach house in Delaware with COVID.

Now Laura Barron-Lopez covers the White House.

Lisa Desjardins covers Congress and the Trump campaign and Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and correspondent for NPR.

Lisa, Laura, rather, I'm going to begin with you.

How did we get from defiance to standing down?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Ultimately, as the weeks had gone on, John since the January 27.

Debate, President Biden was losing support every single day he was losing support from leaders in Congress.

He was losing support from Democrats in Congress.

He was losing donors.

And all of that combined, ultimately made it really untenable for the President to hold his position.

Even though his campaign aides his campaign co-chair Jen O'Malley Dillon, as well as President Biden and those around him continued to say he was in it he was not going to back out of this race.

But lawmakers and a lot of Democrats across the board had ultimately said that they wanted a decision from him by this coming Monday, Sunday evening.

Today, he says that he's not going to run for reelection, endorses Harris.

And already I'm told that Vice President Kamala Harris was making calls to governors to members to other people across the party apparatus to make clear that she is trying to earn this.

And we also saw that both a Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton endorsed her.

Notably though Barack Obama, the former president did not specifically endorse her saying that he thought that the party would ultimately come to its own decision through a healthy process.

JOHN YANG: What do we know about the circle of advisors around the President as this process went on?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So we know that as the President had become also isolated with COVID, and as the weeks have gone on, since the debate, his circle of closest advisors had also started to shrink, and namely, the people that were constantly speaking to him and relaying what they were hearing from other members of the party to him were Steve Ricchetti, senior adviser to the President, as well as Mike Donilon, another longtime senior adviser to the President.

And Steve Ricchetti is also very close with members of Congress, John, and he was being told by a lot of members of Congress that this was not sustainable, that members of Congress thought that it was time for President Biden to step aside.

And so ultimately, at the end of the day facing all of that fallout from his party and the pressure campaign, the President does decided that it was time to allow someone else to step forward.

JOHN YANG: Pressure from Congress, Lisa Desjardins, what are we hearing from Republicans in Congress and from the Trump campaign?

LISA DESJARDINS: The Trump campaign quickly came out with a statement I posted on social media first, which former President Trump said that Biden was not and is not fit to serve.

I raise that because we have seen these resignation calls from other top Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, saying if he is not able to campaign that President Biden should also step aside because he may not be able to run the country.

Now, Democrats completely disagree with that.

But Republicans have been preparing this message for a while since that disastrous debate for President Biden.

Now, essentially, Republicans are quickly now turning to Harris.

They have been building files on her of course, since she was nominated for vice president.

But now as a potential nominee, they are looking at where she does well and where they might do well against her.

Sources close to Trump campaign world and the Trump campaign PACs tell me that Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are three states that they think were Harris does, at least as poorly in their words or worse than Biden, they would like to pick up those states.

Those also, of course, are states where they think that perhaps new nominee vice presidential nominee J.D.

Vance could do well.

But you know, out of all of this, they are already launching an ad against Harris.

Look at this one from a PAC affiliated with Donald Trump.

WOMAN: Kamala was in on it, she covered up Joe's obvious mental decline.

KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. Vice President: Our president is in good shape, and good, tireless, vibrant, and I have no doubt about the length of the work that we have done.

LISA DESJARDINS: Something else that's important about this is I have sources in House Republican leadership and elsewhere telling me, we should expect investigations in the House immediately into this topic.

And also, by the way, they may extend the congressional session in the House, which would be a problem for frontliners on both sides, including Democrats.

JOHN YANG: Domenico, what does this do to the Democrats?

What's next for them?

They're just -- the convention is just weeks away, and a virtual Roll Call is even closer?

DOMENICO MONTANARO, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent, NPR: Well, politically, it's a pretty smart move to make this announcement if President Biden was going to make this announcement today, because it helps potentially to blunt any possible bounce that Donald Trump might have had out of the Republican National Convention, when we always see a Republican or Democratic candidate get some kind of a bounce out of that.

So Kamala Harris has a lot to prove in the next couple of weeks to be able to step up to the plate, so to speak, show that she has the vigor, the competence, that's opposite from what they saw with Joe Biden.

And that was the biggest problem was people saw how Joe Biden performed in that debate on the 28th, on June 27.

And Democrats, Harris on fire because they just thought that this was somebody who could not carry the message forward.

Kamala Harris as a candidate in 2019, struggled so much.

She didn't really seem to have a core.

She wanted to build herself as a problem solver.

But now she has a record to run on essentially, having served with President Biden, and now the party is going to be looking to her to be able to take that democratic message forward, if she indeed is the nominee, and likely will be as we're hearing from our sources.

JOHN YANG: Well, let me ask you about that.

This party, the Democratic Party has been split in the last couple of years between moderates and sort of more liberals.

Is the party going to fallen behind Harris?

Or is she likely to get a challenge?

DOMENICO MONTANARO: Well, I mean, you have to get 300 signatures from other delegates to be able to get on to a ballot at the Democratic Convention, Joe Biden has some 3,900 delegates already on his side.

Certainly his endorsement matters quite a bit with those delegates.

And we're seeing already a lot of statements out from people backing Harris.

So if she does get a serious challenge, it might actually be a good thing for her because she's likely to still win the nomination, and it would show she has some insight or political skills, that would certainly help her on her way.

Of course, if she doesn't get a serious challenge, then it shows the Democratic Party unity already.

So, we'll see what winds up happening.

There's certainly a lot of people with their eyes set on 2028.

There is a potential opportunity here for Democrats to be able to potentially gain a geographic advantage, because when you think about the people who might be a potential Harris, VP, there are some swing state, you know, candidates or swing state governors who might be a possibility or senator and think about somebody like Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, somebody like Mark Kelly, the senator from Arizona, both swing states, both places where Joe Biden, since that debate, has seen his poll numbers really crater somewhat.

And that's what really drove this decision by so many people concerned about whether or not Democrats could win in these swing states.

JOHN YANG: The next nominee is going to have to choose a vice presidential nominee.

I know, Laura, you've got reporting on that.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Yes.

So the names that I've been hearing the most from Democratic sources in terms of who could be a vice presidential pick for a presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

If she were to win the nomination our Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.

He's on the shortlist as well as North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear.

Of course, names like Mark Kelly have also come up which Domenico mentioned, as well as Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who's the governor of Michigan.

But those three ones that I named are the ones that I hear the most in terms of who they think would be best paired with Kamala Harris.

And also, if you look at those first two, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, key swing states, people that could potentially help Harris in those key states.

Now, of course, again, Harris doesn't have the nomination yet.

And there are some Democrats who want an open process, including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi who voiced that I was told in meeting with California Democrats a week or more ago, and so other names that have come up as potential nominee for president again, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan as well as Shapiro of Pennsylvania.

Gavin Newsom also occasionally comes up from California.

But right now, it appears as though the majority of the party very quickly is rallying behind Harris.

JOHN YANG: Domenico, I want to ask you to wrap this up.

I mean, the Biden campaign wanted an early debate to try to change the direction of the campaign.

Well, they've done it in a way I think they've succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, changing the direction.

Give us a sense of your - - your sense of the state of this race right now.

DOMENICO MONTANARO: Well, certainly Trump has the edge.

He's ahead in a lot of the swing states all seven when I did a review of the polls this morning.

He certainly had anywhere from two to seven points in those states.

Now, can those numbers be made up?

Absolutely.

And certainly this pick is going to inject a degree of enthusiasm with Democrats, when you've seen a president with really probably the worst three-week stretch of any presidential candidate possible with maybe the worst debate performance in history, a solid Republican National Convention, where Trump's party showed the heavy degree of unity and confidence, and then three Biden getting COVID this past week, it really just played into the narrative that he's too frail to continue on as a candidate for four years.

I think this does change the narrative, though, because you have a younger candidate, if it is Kamala Harris or anybody else, and I already hear Democrats saying, hey, we can't have a candidate who's going to be 83 years old by the end of their second term if Donald Trump does win the presidency.

So already sort of inverting the narrative on Trump.

JOHN YANG: Domenico, Lisa and Laura, thank you all very much.

DOMENICO MONTANARO: You're welcome.

JOHN YANG: Democratic Party officials will now have to negotiate state election laws.

And they're just six weeks away from the first mail-in ballots being sent out to voters in North Carolina.

Rick Hasen teaches at UCLA law school and is an expert on election law.

Rick, how hard or easy isn't going to be for Democratic Parties in the states across the country to change the balance?

RICK HASEN, UCLA School of Law: Well, they don't need to change anything at this point.

Because remember, Joe Biden was never the nominee officially of the Democratic Party.

He was the presumptive nominee, his name was going to be submitted either after this virtual roll call that was maybe going to take place in early August or at the convention.

So really, the fact that Joe Biden is dropping out now is not the issue.

The issue is one more of timing in terms of when the information from the party is going to be transmitted to the various state officials.

I think that it should go in almost every place very smoothly.

And there should not be an issue based on the fact that it's going to be a different nominee other than Joe Biden.

JOHN YANG: Now, before the President dropped out this morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson was out saying that he was going to expect legal challenges from Republican parties across the country to wall this.

How -- is there grounds -- are their grounds for a legal challenge?

And could that how long could that fight go on?

RICK HASEN: Well, I don't think that the legal challenges would be likely to be successful.

I think they'd be very unlikely to be successful.

Ohio, for example, had an early ballot deadline.

They changed the deadline to later.

But they the later -- the change doesn't go into effect technically until September 1st, but state officials have said, we're going to stick with the new deadline.

And so Democrats should be fine to put an anomaly after that convention.

So someone could try to challenge that.

The courts have been very protective of the rights of major party candidates to be on the ballot.

There are a few other states where technical issues could be raised like Washington State, I think these things are very unlikely to succeed.

And it's just kind of more smoke that's being thrown up to try to, you know, it was tried to keep Biden in the race and now to try to claim that Democrats are doing something illegitimate.

JOHN YANG: In your experience and your knowledge of the history of all this.

Has there ever been a presidential candidate dropping out this late in the campaign?

RICK HASEN: This is very late.

And remember the Democrats have a very late convention so everything is later I think maybe that was because of the Olympics were taking place between the two conventions.

It's very late.

But you know, lots of other countries run entire elections in the period that we would have between Labor Day and our election day.

So, you know, certainly, there's enough time to ramp up campaigns.

And I think that's what we're going to see.

JOHN YANG: Yeah, we've been reminded of those short campaigns recently, in Britain and in France.

What happens to the money that the Biden Harris campaign has raised?

RICK HASEN: It's going to depend on if Harris is the nominee or not.

Harris is not the nominee then Biden would have to either give the money away to the Democratic Party or two -- he could set up a Super PAC potentially, he could have his own PAC that could support a candidate, those things would be not as good as if Harris took over.

Most election lawyers think that of Harris takes over, she can just keep using the funds.

There are some people who claim that she wouldn't be able to do that, at least not yet.

And so it's possible there will be a challenge.

But usually campaign finance challenges come years later, we're still getting some resolution of things that happened in 2016, when it comes to campaign finance.

So I think if it's Harris, she's very likely to be able to take over the use of that money.

JOHN YANG: Now the process of choosing the next nominee, some Republicans are already criticizing it, saying that it's anointing Vice President Harris that it's anti small D democratic, taking the decision away from the voters.

What do you make of that?

RICK HASEN: Well, remember that the years ago, the parties didn't have a such a democratic process, really, the democracy comes mostly when it's the choice between the Democrat and the Republican.

It's since the late 1960s.

The process has been democratized.

But here you don't have the party leaders overcoming the will of someone who still wants to run for office, the person who was in the lead has said I'm stepping back.

And so you need to have some process.

And if anything, if it is Harris, remember, she was on the ticket with Biden, so she was getting those votes from the voters with Biden all along the way.

JOHN YANG: Are there any say that changing the balance or the ballots won't have to be changed that much, is not much of a challenge or a problem?

Are there other legal hurdles you can foresee in all of this?

RICK HASEN: Well, so what's going to have to happen is they're going to have to have their ticket, right.

So I think you might still see the roll call, virtual roll call take place so that the Democrats lock this up by early August.

That way any of those long shot legal challenges would be would be gone.

And I think it would be smooth sailing from the point of view of election law.

And that will really be about the politics of the whole situation.

JOHN YANG: Election law expert Rick Hasen of UCLA law school, thank you very much.

RICK HASEN: Thank you.

JOHN YANG: President Biden's decision to end his campaign for reelection is unprecedented in many ways.

But the path from one president to another and from one nominee to another has not always been a straight line.

To talk about how this moment fits into this country's historical context, joined by our very own Judy Woodruff.

Judy, we were just here a week ago, you and I were talking about an assassination attempt on a presidential campaign per candidate.

You and I have seen a lot in presidential politics.

JUDY WOODRUFF: For sure.

I know I've seen a lot.

JOHN YANG: that I've been there with you in Washington.

Can you ever remember a seven day period like this?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, or and a 24 day period.

I mean, when you think back on June, the 27th, we were all gathered around our television set to watch the first debate of this presidential election and remind remember, that was a debate the Biden team wanted, they wanted an early debate.

They wanted to get out there and prove that President Biden was up to this campaign that he was vigorous, and he was going to go the distance.

What happened?

We still are trying to figure it out.

But it was not a good night for Joe Biden.

And ever since then, the call for him to rethink whether he is a candidate has grown louder and louder.

And here we are three weeks and three days later, and he's made this decision, but it has been a painful process to watch, John, one can only imagine what's been going on with him personally with his family with his closest advisors for all the reporting we've seen.

And here we are, everything has changed.

JOHN YANG: We've had presidents drop their reelection bids before, Harry Truman in 1948 and Lyndon Johnson in 1968.

But back then he did it much earlier.

He was being pressed by the Vietnam War and other issues.

This time the President decided against it bcause of physical questions or questions about his health.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And that is what makes it unprecedented.

You're right Harry Truman, LBJ, both of them faced opposition in their own party.

They both made the announcement in March of election year that they were not seeking reelection.

We are in late July.

We are less than four weeks from the convention.

And you're right and the President is citing me he doesn't say that in the statement, but it's clear.

I mean, what has happened is questions were raised about whether he had the physical, the mental, the emotional, the cognitive ability to carry out another four year term.

This we've seen nothing like it I thought back to Tom Eagleton who was George McGovern's running mate, they had gone to the convent -- McGovern was chosen by the Democratic delegates in 1972.

He picked Tom Eagleton, the senator from Missouri to be his running mate.

Then all these stories came out about his emotional health, mental health shock treatment.

He was soon off the ticket.

And along came Sarge Shriver, but nothing like this exactly.

JOHN YANG: By the way, I misspoke when I said Harry Truman dropped down '48, it was '52.

JUDY WOODRUFF: '52.

JOHN YANG: Now, you've been traveling the country before there are a series America at the crossroads, talking to a lot of people about the Divisions in America.

Is this something that has the potential of bringing people together or further dividing people?

JUDY WOODRUFF: I would like to tell you that it has the potential to resolve all of our differences and bring us together.

JOHN YANG: Oh, please do.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I will say that I think it has the potential clearly at the very least to get people to rethink this race, we have a whole new, we're not sure who the nominee is, we believe it's going to be Kamala Harris.

We don't know who her running mate is there are any number of scenarios there?

What would that look at?

What if she chose a woman?

What if she chose Gretchen Whitmer, and it were two women, we don't know what she's going to do, we're not for certain that she's going to be the nominee.

There's so many ifs at this point.

But I think my point is that people who have been looking at this race, and they've been telling me and a lot of other reporters, Joe Biden is too old.

He shouldn't be running, they're going to take another look at this race.

And I'm not predicting that it's going to pull away the hardcore Donald Trump supporters.

But those folks who are out there undecided or who were just kind of turned off by the whole process, thinking this is not even an election I can get excited about.

They're going to be taking another look.

And so it's really impossible to say right now what's going to happen.

I think it's fair to say all bets are off.

JOHN YANG: You know, for so long, people have been complaining about how long the Presidential cycles are, that it's up to years, frankly, the campaign and goes on, we're going to have a very compressed campaign this time.

They're going to have the nominee picked really around Labor Day, and you're going to have the general campaign be the campaign, what do you think of that?

JUDY WOODRUFF: And then it's going to be a race until November the fifth.

I'm thinking of England of Great Britain in the UK, they have their, their campaigns and what is it six weeks or something?

So we are and we don't even -- in the United States we're used to these two-year long campaigns.

So I do think, John, that the, first of all, just the unprecedented nature of it, the news coverage about remind us again, who is Kamala Harris, what does she stand for?

Tell us about her record, introduce us to her running mate.

And by the way, J.D.

Vance, who was Trump's running mate, people are still getting to know him.

So there are a lot of questions, stories to be told reporting to be done.

All that's going to happen.

You're right in a very condensed, there's so much news.

It's going to happen between today July the 21st and the start of the Democratic Convention on August the 19th.

And then you get past the Democratic convention.

And you're right, it's Labor Day.

And it's a sprint for the finish.

There are -- you and I both know from having covered politics or so on.

So much can happen in a week, in a month.

And we've seen it just in the last month with Joe Biden.

JOHN YANG: Judy Woodruff, thanks so much for your perspective.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Thank you.

JOHN YANG: There is other news, new details are emerging about the assassination attempt against former President Trump as the House prepares to interrogate the head of the Secret Service.

A week after denying it the Secret Service acknowledged that it had turned down requests from the Trump detail for extra federal resources over the past two years.

Now lawmakers in both parties are demanding answers, with many Republicans calling on Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheadle to resign.

REP. MIKE JOHNSON, Speaker of the House: We need the Secret Service to do one simple thing, protect our presidents and former presidents in these cases, that's not happening.

And the initial excuses that she has given for the lapses that happened last Saturday are just are just unbelievable.

I mean, the Democrats are just as concerned as the Republicans are about this because the agency is not a partisan agency.

JOHN YANG: Speaker Johnson said also has questions for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas whose department oversees the Secret Service.

Tensions in the Middle East are escalating.

The Israeli military said intercepted a missile fired today by Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The Houthi said they were trying to hit the Israeli resort city of Eilat on the Red Sea.

In recent days, Israeli fighter jets hit the Yemeni port of Hodeidah, in response to a drone attack that killed a man in Tel Aviv.

Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Texas more than 1,000 people are still without power amid stifling heat.

More than half of the 23 storm related deaths are now being blamed on heat.

CenterPoint Energy, Houston's power provider faces two class action lawsuits, including from restaurant owners who say they've lost income and paid for food that's now spoiled.

And that is PBS News Weekend for this remarkable Sunday.

I'm John Yang.

For all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us.

Have a good week.