Welcome to the news hour and happy Independence Day. Well it's been one week since

President Joe Biden's poor performance in the first debate of the 2024 campaign

caused a political shockwave.

The president insists he is staying in the race.

But even on this 4th of July holiday, concerns continue to grow inside the Democratic

party about whether Mr. Biden is the best person to sit atop the ticket in November.

News Hour, political correspondent Lisa Desjardin has been talking to lawmakers and to voters.

She joins me now with the latest.

Good to see you, Lisa.

Hi. So you've been, so far, rather, we've seen two Democratic lawmakers come out publicly,

only two so far to publicly call for Mr. Biden to step aside. Your

reporting shows that many more could be

considering that. Who are we talking about here?

I'm now the texts and phone calls from Democratic lawmakers concerned have not

waned in the last week and talking to about a dozen or so House

members in particular and top staffers in Congress who are Democrats in the last

couple of days I can report that there are two movements to write letters asking the president to step aside as the nominee.

These are from two groups that are trying to form.

One, veteran lawmakers generally who are in safe seats like Lloyd Doggett, who you interviewed here on this program.

The other is from frontline members who are much more vulnerable, who believe they have much

more to risk if Biden is on the ballot.

So these two groups right now are trying to get text together, trying to

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