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Global IT outage should be a wake-up call for governments, industry and individuals

The mass global IT outage has exposed the vulnerability of modern daily life when technology fails. 

The chaos, which impacted businesses and services worldwide, from GP appointments and flights to news broadcasts and online payments, is thought to have been triggered by a security software update rather than any kind of deliberate cyber attack by a hostile state of malicious individuals.

However, given the scale of the disruption, this disaster demonstrates just how powerful cyber and software could be if used as a weapon.

Follow live: Major services across the world affected by outage

It is why any actual act of war by one state against another would always be expected to include a cyber dimension, with the ability to take the frontline into people’s homes, offices, or anywhere that there is a computer.

Just imagine having to deal with being knocked offline and unable to receive communications, make payments, or travel as some kind of physical, real-world military strike was taking place.

Ukrainian citizens have to endure Russian cyber attacks – a tactic that ramped up in the weeks before the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The fact Friday’s global disruption was not a malicious cyber hack will be slim comfort given the impact that even just a mistaken software glitch has had across continents.

But, it should be yet a massive wake-up call for governments, industry and individuals about the need for greater resilience against the potential for computer codes to go wrong.

This would not only shore up economies against future mistakes but also build up defences to protect nations should the next major attack be a deliberate cyber assault.

Al Lakhani, a cyber security expert, said in a statement: “This incident underscores the importance of businesses thoroughly researching and vetting their cybersecurity solutions before implementation.”

He added: “The lesson here is blindingly obvious: investing in cybersecurity is not just about acquiring the latest or most popular tools but ensuring those tools are reliable and resilient.”

This post appeared first on sky.com

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Global IT outage: All it took was a few lines of code and millions of machines were dead – the risks of complexity

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

We were told that as the internet matured, that this kind of thing – a single error causing a domino effect taking out millions of machines – was supposed to become less and less likely. There would be more and more servers and cables distributed in more and more places, making a single point of failure increasingly unlikely.

Global IT outage latest: ‘Huge increase’ in 999 calls

Instead, what today’s episode – in which an update from a company called CrowdStrike to customers using its services around the world essentially broke the Windows operating system on their computers – has underlined is that often the more complex a system becomes, the more vulnerable it is to collapse.

The irony at the centre of the chaos

The great irony, of course, is that CrowdStrike’s raison d’être is to prevent moments like this from happening. The company’s “Falcon Sensor” is a product used to prevent cyber attacks – a complex programme best thought of as a kind of super anti-virus package, which, in order to do its job, gets privileged access to more parts of your machine than regular software.

But it so happens the latest update to Falcon Sensor, uploaded overnight to computers around the world, had a dodgy bit of code in it, which caused Windows machines to crash.

How can it be resolved?

Right now, it looks as if the only way it can be resolved is by technicians rebooting each machine and manually deleting a particular file (C-00000291*.sys since you asked). In other words, spare a thought for your company’s technicians, because they’re about to have a long weekend.

But perhaps the most striking lesson from the episode is a more ancient one, laid out by historian Joseph Tainter in his 1988 book The Collapse of Complex Societies.

The more complex societies and systems become, the more vulnerable they are to collapse. Tainter was referring to examples like the fall of Rome or the collapse of ancient Mesopotamian civilisation, but one could just as easily apply the logic to modern examples.

Society’s complexity is making us vulnerable

Lurking beneath Tainter’s thesis was the point that often in a complex society of organisation actors might make decisions which seem sensible but, due to the complexity of the system and their inability to understand it, could actually make it more vulnerable.

Consider the subprime crisis which triggered the financial crisis of 2008. Mortgages were packaged and repackaged into assets sold, eventually, on to banks which had little understanding of their actual value and their risks. The more complex the system became, the less able people were to comprehend how exposed they were to a catastrophic failure, and the more vulnerable the entire edifice was to collapse.

Now let’s ponder the current IT malaise. Let’s ask ourselves: how did it come to be that so many companies around the world had the very same bit of software installed on their systems, making them vulnerable to the very same lines of duff code?

After all, the vast majority of people working at the companies affected will never have heard of CrowdStrike. Like the bankers presiding over the financial crisis, they had no idea of the potential vulnerabilities lying within their systems.

But in recent years, as businesses have become more and more concerned about the risk of cyber attacks, they have begun to implement cyber security checks and regulations. These often took the form of a checklist some poor operative had to fill out: how many computers have you got? What operating system? Are they all online? What forms of cyber protection do they have? And so on.

Now, this might sound like frustrating red tape to many of you, but the reality is that these days some companies stipulate that anyone doing business with them must have fulfilled all the items on the checklist.

So all of a sudden, salespeople trying to do a deal would discover that they couldn’t do it without complying with the checklist. The company’s financial survival depended on being able to tick the boxes!

How one company became so powerful

And invariably one of the boxes in those checklists was: do you have an endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution? And if you didn’t have an EDR solution (or, more likely, didn’t know what one was) then invariably you googled EDR and looked for the world’s biggest provider, which just so happened to be… CrowdStrike.

Perhaps you spoke to your IT provider and insisted that you needed an EDR. Perhaps they said: “oh I wouldn’t do that if I were you” – but then… no EDR no sale.

This is a stylised example, of course, but you see how this kind of thing can happen.

And hence, gradually and imperceptibly, a large proportion of the world’s companies came – mostly unbeknownst to their leaders – to be running the very same piece of software with direct access to the most privileged parts of their computers. And then all it took was a few lines of code and all of those machines were instantly dead – or rather, they faced the “Blue Screen of Death”.

So there’s a reminder here about the risks of complexity.

Too early to tell extent of disruption and economic damage

It’s way too early to put a figure on how much disruption this episode has caused and how much economic damage wrought. The short answer is almost certainly: a lot. Millions of people around the world have been unable to travel, to communicate, to transact. It may well transpire that it has put lives at risk, given it has affected many doctors’ ability to do their job.

Perhaps the best thing that can be taken from today’s chaos is that it might just serve as a cautionary tale which could make our computers that bit safer and more stable in the future. It might remind bosses that cyber security decisions are more than box-ticking exercises – and sometimes installing cyber security software can backfire.

It reminds us how dangerous it is if everyone in the world is relying on the same provider. It reminds us about the need for redundancy – to have backup systems. It reminds us of the dangers of complexity.

This probably won’t come as much consolation if you’re one of those people whose holiday plans have been disrupted or your business messed around by the IT outage today. But it’s something.

This post appeared first on sky.com

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From Wall Street darling to firm behind the world’s worst IT outage – who are CrowdStrike?

CrowdStrike, the company at the heart of the IT outage being described as the worst the world has seen, has been a darling of Wall Street over the last year.

So far in 2024, its share price has risen by 96%, making it one of the best-performing stocks on both the tech-heavy Nasdaq and the broader S&P 500 index – to which it was recently admitted – meaning the company was valued at £84bn as at the close on Thursday night.

Money blog latest

How CrowdStrike thrilled investors

What thrilled investors was how the company, based in Austin, Texas, sold itself as a one-stop shop in the field of so-called ‘endpoint’ protection and how a lot of what it was doing was AI-enabled.

Endpoint protection originally began as straightforward anti-virus software but over the last decade, has evolved into the provision of a series of services aimed at protecting endpoints, those physical devices – computers, laptops, mobile phones, tablets and servers – that are connected to a network.

Those services include threat detection and investigation, data leak prevention and network administration.

Massive market share made it so popular

Several factors, in particular, made CrowdStrike so popular. First was its market share – some 24% – of the endpoint protection market.

Second was the migration of data and the provision of IT services to the cloud, a transformational shift that increased demand for cyber security services.

At the end of last year, less than half of global workloads had been migrated to the cloud, pointing to a big uptick in future demand.

A key time for cybersecurity spending

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, were new rules announced at the end of 2023 by the Securities & Exchange Commission, the main US financial regulator, requiring public companies to disclose cybersecurity incidents and to disclose, annually, their cyber security risk management, strategy, and governance.

That, too, was seen as a key driver of demand – as was increased spending on cyber security by governments around the world and, in particular, in the United States.

So highly valued was CrowdStrike and its prospects that it was trading at a stupendous rating. Investors traditionally value companies on a multiple of their earnings (the price/earnings ratio) and, the higher the multiple, the more highly it is rated.

On CrowdStrike’s expected earnings for the year to the end of April 2025, the company was valued – as at the close on Thursday – on a multiple of 98. That compares with the current multiple of 28 for the S&P 500.

This was a business, then, in which a great deal of hope was invested.

Who is George Kurtz?

CrowdStrike’s story and that of its president and chief executive, George Kurtz, is that of endpoint protection itself. Mr Kurtz, whose stake in CrowdStrike was valued at $4.2bn on Thursday night, was a qualified accountant who in October 1999 launched an anti-virus software company called Foundstone.

He sold it to McAfee, another anti-virus provider, in 2004 for $86m and became the company’s chief technology officer.

In 2009, he also wrote Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets & Solutions, the world’s best-selling book on cyber-security.

By 2011, becoming frustrated at how McAfee was evolving in response to the changing nature of cyber-threats, events came to a head when he watched as a fellow airline passenger took 15 minutes to download McAfee’s service onto their laptop.

He later recalled to the business magazine Forbes in 2020: “The guy was talking to the flight attendant, he was reading his newspaper, and he’s doing all these things while the software is grinding away and I’m just sitting there going, oh my God. I’m the CTO of this company, and this is terrible.”

He subsequently left to join Warburg Pincus, the private equity firm, with a vision of building a cloud-based service providing endpoint protection, as it is known today, based on an ‘intelligence-first’ approach.

That was the genesis of CrowdStrike, whose initial slogan was “We Stop Breaches”.

Stopping US government attacks and identifying election interference

The business attracted widespread attention when, in June 2016, it revealed it had identified attempts by two Russian intelligence groups, codenamed Cosy Bear and Fancy Bear, to hack various US government entities including the White House, State Department and Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Global IT outages latest: Mass outage affects worldwide travel and GP surgeries

It also revealed the hackers had infiltrated the Democratic National Committee in what is now recognised as an attempt by Russia to interfere in that year’s US presidential election. It emerged the hackers had stolen emails from the DNC and from Hillary Clinton’s election campaign and handed them to Wikileaks.

Mr Kurtz, who had been given his first computer at the age of 10 – a Texas Instruments 99/4A machine on which he was quickly devising games – was big news, as was CrowdStrike. VCs and other backers, including Google, fell over themselves to invest in the business.

CrowdStrike was valued at $11bn when it floated on Nasdaq in June 2019 valuing Mr Kurtz’s stake at $1.7bn.

Handling a crisis

Until now, it has been a spectacular story, but how Mr Kurtz handles this crisis will be critical.

Looking exhausted, he issued an apology to CrowdStrike’s customers today during an interview with NBC, during which he said: “We’re deeply sorry.

“That update had a software bug in it and caused an issue with the Microsoft operating system.

“We identified this very quickly and remediated the issue.”

A fractious relationship with Microsoft

Those comments could, though, further damage the relationship CrowdStrike has with Microsoft – which had already become increasingly fractious.

In April last year, at an investor presentation, Mr Kurtz accused Microsoft of using “the same failed model that McAfee and Symantec have been using for the past 25 years” and claimed CrowdStrike regularly beat Microsoft when the pair were competing with each other.

He doubled down on those comments when asked about Microsoft’s push into cybersecurity in December last year, he responded: “Given Microsoft’s history, it’s like the doctor selling the patient cigarettes.”

Then in May this year, after the US Cyber Safety Review Board criticised Microsoft for failing to prevent a 2023 cyber attack on its cloud service, he launched a service called Falcon for Defender – claiming the service would stop attacks missed by Microsoft’s own Defender service.

He said: “We decided enough is enough. There’s a widespread crisis of confidence among security and IT teams within the Microsoft customer base.”

Biggest supporters

For now, some of CrowdStrike’s biggest supporters are keeping the faith.

Dan Ives, managing director and senior equity research analyst at Wedbush Securities and one of Wall Street’s best-known tech-watchers, told clients today: “CrowdStrike has a strong brand and global marketing presence which will need to go into next gear over the coming weeks and months to curtail some damage from this.

“Today CrowdStrike becomes a household name but not in a good way and this will take time to settle down but does not change our positive long-term view of CrowdStrike or the cyber security sector.”

Microsoft, meanwhile, will be doing its best to distance itself from this crisis.

Longer term impacts

But this incident will have massive repercussions longer term.

JD Vance, Donald Trump’s nominee for vice president, has been a vocal critic of big tech.

His concerns that a handful of giant tech companies have an unhealthy grip over their markets – and that control of the world’s vital IT infrastructure is too concentrated – are likely to gain traction in coming days.

Microsoft is likely to find itself having to draw on its decades of experience in battling with politicians and regulators.

This post appeared first on sky.com

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Global IT outage: Air and rail travel chaos continues – as passengers describe ‘bedlam’ conditions

Transport networks around the world have been thrown into chaos by the global IT outage.

Some of the world’s largest airports, including London Heathrow, Singapore’s Changi Airport, Schipol Airport in Amsterdam and Melbourne Airport in Australia have faced problems with check-ins and security as online systems run by Microsoft shut down.

As of 11am (UK-time) Friday morning, 1,167 flights were cancelled worldwide, with the number expected to rise, according to data from aviation analysts Cirium.

Major US airlines including American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines grounded all flights on Friday morning citing communication issues, while in Europe, passengers at Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport – the continent’s busiest – are experiencing average delays of 78 minutes.

Many airports have turned to manual systems, including Belfast International Airport, where whiteboards are being used to provide flight information, as the electronic screens are not functioning.

One passenger at Berlin airport said despite technical issues having been resolved, flights due to take off later today have been cancelled.

Anna, who was meant to travel to Split in Croatia at midday with her four children, said she found out that her flight had been cancelled when she got to the terminal at 9.30am.

“The only information we were able to find was a piece of paper that has been posted to a wall. Of the 20 flights, only about three hadn’t been cancelled,” she told Sky News.

In the UK, pictures emerged of people waiting in queues at Edinburgh Airport and at Gatwick in London, lines of at least 50 metres formed with staff unpacking boxes of bottled water.

Other airports such as London’s Luton and Stansted, Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham issued warnings to passengers that they may face delays.

One traveller at Gatwick Airport said he had been queuing for more than three-and-a-half hours ahead of a flight to Miami, Florida.

Dean Seddon, 42, from Plymouth, said: “There are just people everywhere, there must be 400 people in this queue for the check in desk I’m at… it’s just bedlam.”

Read more:
Financial shock for Microsoft and Crowdstrike after outages
IT outage ‘causing disruption in majority of GP practices’

The IT outage comes as Friday is expected to be the busiest day for UK flight departures, with over 3,214 departures alone – the highest number of daily departures since October 2019, Cirium reported.

UK air traffic control provider Nats said its systems are “operating normally”.

Posting on X, Transport Secretary Louise Haigh said: “We are aware of IT failures impacting several transport operators and terminals today, and we’re working at pace with industry and across government on the issue.

“There are no known security issues at present.”

Issues across ‘entire’ UK train network

On the railway, 14 companies run by industry body Rail Delivery Group have been affected, according to Sky News’ business correspondent, Paul Kelso.

Those affected include: Avanti, c2c, Gatwick Express, Great Northern, Great Western Railway, Hull Trains, London Northwestern Railway, Lumo, Merseyrail, Northern, Southern, Thameslink, Transport for Wales, TransPennine Express and West Midlands.

National Rail said the IT outage was causing issues “across the entire network” with some train operators “unable to access driver diagrams at certain locations, leading to potential short-notice train cancellations”.

Other key systems such as real-time customer information platforms, and ticket machines at certain stations are also affected.

The company said affected customers are able to use their tickets on other services including the London Underground and London buses at no extra cost.

Network Rail assured customers that the “vast majority” of the rail network is open despite the IT outage.

This post appeared first on sky.com

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Campaign crisis: Dems who have called for Biden to drop out or raised concerns about his health

President Biden’s catastrophic performance at the recent presidential debate has sparked panic among the Democratic Party’s hierarchy, with key players said to be mulling how to get him to abandon his re-election bid.

The situation has plunged the party into crisis and threatens to drive a wedge between Biden loyalists and elected officials in swing districts ahead of next month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Biden’s top campaign aides have been working damage control with major donors, while the White House – and Biden himself – remain adamant he is the right man to lead the party against former President Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee.

Democrats who say Biden should drop out

  • Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y.: The moderate front-liner and one of the Democrats’ most vulnerable incumbents reportedly said in an interview with the New York Times on July 10 that he would ‘be doing a grave disservice if I said [Biden] was the best candidate to serve this fall.’ Ryan added, ‘For the good of our country, for my two young kids, I’m asking Joe Biden to step aside in the upcoming election and deliver on the promise to be a bridge to a new generation of leaders.’
  • Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas: ‘I am hopeful that he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw. I respectfully call on him to do so.’
  • Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz.: ‘I’m going to support [Biden], but I think that this is an opportunity to look elsewhere. … What he needs to do is shoulder the responsibility of keeping that seat, and part of that responsibility is to get out of this race.’
  • Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass: ‘President Biden has done enormous service to our country, but now is the time for him to follow in one of our founding father George Washington’s footsteps and step aside to let new leaders rise up and run against Donald Trump.’
  • Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill.: ‘Mr. President, your legacy is set. We owe you the greatest debt of gratitude. The only thing that you can do now to cement that for all time and prevent utter catastrophe is to step down and let someone else do this.’
  • Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn.: ‘As an elected leader, I feel a responsibility to be honest about what I believe, even when it’s hard to hear. President Biden is a good man and I appreciate his lifetime of service. But I believe he should step aside for the next generation of leadership. The stakes are too high.’
  • Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash.: ‘And he has health care concerns. You saw that at the White House press conference today, where there were not clear answers given. So I just think at, this point, there are other people that could deliver that message better. And the stakes are so high.’
  • Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J.: ‘I realize this is hard, but we have done hard things in the pursuit of democracy since the founding of this nation. It is time to do so again. And because I know President Biden cares deeply about the future of our country, I am asking that he declare that he won’t run for reelection and will help lead us through a process toward a new nominee.’
  • Reps. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.; Mark Takano, D-Calif.; Don Beyer, D-Va., reportedly expressed during a virtual meeting hosted by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on July 7 that Biden should exit the presidential race as the Democratic nominee on Sunday, and most of them said Harris should be the nominee, according to reporting by the Associated Press. Beyer later released a statement saying he supports Biden.
  • Adam Frisch, candidate for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District: ‘I thank President Biden for his years of service, but the path ahead requires a new generation of leadership to take our country forward.’
  • Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt.: ‘We cannot unsee President Biden’s disastrous debate performance. We cannot ignore or dismiss the valid questions raised since that night. I understand why President Biden wants to run. He saved us from Donald Trump once and wants to do it again. But he needs to reassess whether he is the best candidate to do so. In my view, he is not. For the good of the country, I’m calling on President Biden to withdraw from the race.’
  • Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore.: ‘While this is a decision for the president and the first lady, I hope they will come to the conclusion that I and others have: President Biden should not be the Democratic presidential nominee. It is a painful and difficult conclusion but there is no question in my mind that we will all be better served if the president steps aside as the Democratic nominee and manages a transition under his terms. He has earned that right.’
  • Rep. Hillary Scholten, D-Mich.: ‘President Biden has served his country well, but for the sake of our democracy, he must pass the torch to a new candidate for the 2024 election.’
  • Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill.: ‘ In passing the torch now, President Biden has a chance to live up to this standard and seal his place in history as one of the greatest leaders our nation, and history, has ever known. He can lead the transition of power to a new generation that can build a stronger party and a stronger nation. I fear if he fails to make the right choice, our democracy will hang in the balance.’
  • Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz.: ‘I was one of President Biden’s earliest supporters in 2020, and I’m proud of the progress we’ve made for Arizona. However the stakes in this election could not be higher. For our country’s sake, it is time for the President to pass the torch to a new generation of leaders.’
  • Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii: ‘Difficult times and realities require difficult decisions. This is one of those times, realities and decisions. My guidepost is what is the best way forward for our country. I do not believe President Biden should continue his candidacy for re-election as President.’
  • Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn.: ‘The 2024 election will define the future of American democracy, and we must put forth the strongest candidate possible to confront the threat posed by Trump’s promised MAGA authoritarianism. I no longer believe that is Joe Biden, and I hope that, as he has throughout a lifetime of public service, he will continue to put our nation first and, as he promised, make way for a new generation of leaders.’
  • Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif.: ‘We must find a candidate from our deep bench of talent who can defeat Donald Trump … I hope all Democrats will join me in putting the country first, preserving the progress of the past four years, and solidifying Joe Biden’s legacy as one of the great leaders of our time — by defeating Donald Trump.’
  • Rep. Eric Sorensen, D-Ill.: ‘Every day, I remain committed to the people of Central and Northwestern Illinois. I believe our best days are still ahead. And today, I am hopeful President Biden will step aside in his campaign for president.’
  • Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Colo.: ‘Joe Biden saved our country once, and I’m joining the growing number of people in my district and across the country to ask him to do it again. Please pass the torch to one of our many capable Democratic leaders so we have the best chance to defeat Donald Trump, who is the greatest threat to the foundation of this country that we have ever faced.’
  • Rep. Mike Levin, D-Calif.: ‘I have deep respect for President Biden’s five plus decades of public service and incredible appreciation for the work we’ve done together these last three and a half years. But I believe the time has come for President Biden to pass the torch.’
  • Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M.: ‘While the decision to withdraw from the campaign is President Biden’s alone, I believe it is in the best interests of our country for him to step aside.’ 
  • Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill.: ‘It’s time for Joe Biden to pass the torch.’ 
  • Reps. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., Marc Veasey, D-Texas, Chuy Garcia, D-Ill. and Marc Pocan, D-Wisc.: ‘Mr. President, with great admiration for you personally, sincere respect for your decades of public service and patriotic leadership, and deep appreciation for everything we have accomplished together during your presidency, it is now time for you to pass the torch to a new generation of Democratic leaders.’ 
  • Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont.: ‘Montanans have put their trust in me to do what is right, and it is a responsibility I take seriously. I have worked with President Biden when it has made Montana stronger, and I’ve never been afraid to stand up to him when he is wrong. And while I appreciate his commitment to public service and our country, I believe President Biden should not seek re-election to another term.’

Democrats who have raised concerns 

  • Former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.: ‘I think it’s a legitimate question to say, ‘Is this an episode or is this a condition?’ When people ask that question, it’s completely legitimate of both candidates.’
  • Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, D-Wash.: ‘About 50 million Americans tuned in and watched that debate. I was one of them for about five very painful minutes. We all saw what we saw, you can’t undo that, and the truth, I think, is that Biden is going to lose to Trump.’
  • Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine: ‘In 2025, I believe Trump is going to be in the White House. Maine’s representatives will need to work with him when it benefits Mainers, hold him accountable when it does not and work independently across the aisle no matter what.’
  • Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa.: ‘Maybe folks don’t want to hear, but we have timing that is running out. Time is not on our side. We have a few months to do a monumental task. It’s not cheap and it’s not easy. If our president decides this is not a pathway forward for him, we have to move very quickly. There’s not going to be time for a primary. That time is past. The vice president is the obvious choice. She’s sitting right there.’
  • Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C.: ‘I do know this: I think that the American people want an explanation; they need to be reassured, and I hope that over the next several days, we’ll do that.’
  • Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.: ‘I think like a lot of people, I was pretty horrified by the debate. … I think people want to make sure that this is a campaign that’s ready to go and win, that the president and his team are being candid with us about his condition, that this was a real anomaly and not just the way he is these days.’
  • Gov. Maura Healey, D-Mass.: ‘President Biden saved our democracy in 2020 and has done an outstanding job over the last four years. I am deeply grateful for his leadership. And I know he agrees this is the most important election of our lifetimes … the best way forward right now is a decision for the president to make. Over the coming days, I urge him to listen to the American people and carefully evaluate whether he remains our best hope to defeat Donald Trump.’
  • Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pa.: ‘In a confidential conversation with other members of House Democratic leadership, I expressed the same concerns that Americans across the country are grappling with, about President Biden’s electability at the top of the ticket.’
  • Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.: ‘We’re all here this week to have this discussion, to have this debate. I’m sure President Biden has a different view of his prospects in this election than I do. But we should be having a discussion about that … in the time since that disastrous debate, I think [the Biden administration] has done nothing to really demonstrate that they have a plan to win this election, that they have a convincing plan to win in the battleground states where we have to win in order to win this election.’
  • Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.: ‘The performance on the debate stage I think rightfully raised questions among the American people about whether the president has the vigor to defeat Donald Trump. And this is an existential risk.’
  • Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.: ‘I expect complete transparency from the White House about this issue and a willingness to answer many legitimate questions from the media and voters about his capabilities.’
  • Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va.: When asked on July 5 if President Biden still gives his party the best chance to win in November, he said, ‘I don’t think we know that yet.’
  • Rep. Chris Pappas, D-N.H.: ‘People are disappointed with what they saw last week. And I think it’s up to President Biden to answer what kind of path he can be on for the future: to restore confidence or to pass the torch.’
  • Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif.: ‘We need a course correction. We’ve got to acknowledge that this was not just one bad night.’
  • Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich.: ‘President Biden has got to go out there, and in a sustained basis, show he has the stamina and can do the job.’
  • Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif.: ‘This White House is going to have to be way less insular than they have been.’
  • Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif.: ‘The question just now is: Is this a candidate who can win the election? Because as much as I love Joe Biden, in those swing states, he’s having a hard time.’
  • Rep. Ann McLane Kuster, D-N.H.: ‘In order to respond to our constituents’ concerns, we need to demonstrate that the president is fit not just for the job but for the campaign.’
  • Rep. Don Davis, D-N.C.: ‘If he is going to stay in, he needs to step up.’
  • Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.: ‘We’re having a serious conversation about what to do.’
  • Colorado Gov. Jared Polis: ‘When you’re down a few points, something needs to change. So, whether that’s the strategy, whether that’s the message, whether that’s the candidate. Look, I think we’re open to all those possibilities.’

Democrats who support Biden as nominee

Twenty-three Democratic governors from across the nation descended on the White House last Wednesday evening to meet with the embattled president, but after the gathering, only Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who leads the Democratic Governors Association, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore spoke to reporters to express their support. 

Moore described the meeting with Biden as ‘honest’ and ‘candid’ and said the governors were ‘going to have his back.’

Hochul said Biden was ‘in it to win it’ and that the trio had pledged their support to him ‘because the stakes could not be higher,’ invoking on the eve of Independence Day the fight against tyranny.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who many commentators have proposed as a possible Biden replacement, also took part in the White House meeting and backed the 81-year-old. 

‘I heard three words from the President tonight – he’s all in. And so am I,’ Newsom posted on X on July 3. Newsom also publicly backed Biden immediately after the debate. 

‘You don’t turn your back because of one performance,’ Newsom said after the debate. ‘What kind of party does that? This president has delivered. We need to deliver for him at this moment.’

Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker has also publicly backed Biden, as has Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and Hawaii Gov. Josh Green. 

Elsewhere, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a longtime Biden ally, has also expressed his support, as well as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.

‘A setback is nothing more than a setup for a comeback,’ Jeffries has posted to X.

As for Democrat senators, Alex Padilla of California has said, ‘Joe Biden is going to be our Democratic nominee,’ while Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada said Biden has ‘always had Nevadans’ backs, whether it’s on the picket lines, protecting our personal freedoms or lowering costs. Now it’s time for us to have his.’ 

Rep. Al Green of Texas has said ‘I think that we need to move forward with Biden.’

‘Any ‘leader’ calling for President Biden to drop out needs to get their priorities straight and stop undermining this incredible actual leader who has delivered real results for our country,’ adds Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said, ‘I don’t care what anybody says; it ain’t going to be no other Democratic candidate.’  And Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has said, ‘I’ll do my best to get him elected.’

Fox News’ Kyle Morris, Alicia Acuna and Greg Norman contributed to this report. 

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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Five more House Democrats call on Biden to drop out, third US senator

Five more House Democrats on Friday joined the growing number of congressional lawmakers who have called on President Biden to drop out of the 2024 election. 

In a joint statement, Reps. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., Marc Veasey, D-Texas, Chuy Garcia, D-Illinois and Marc Pocan, D-Wisc., urged Biden to ‘pass the torch to a new generation of Democratic leaders.’ 

‘Mr. President, with great admiration for you personally, sincere respect for your decades of public service and patriotic leadership, and deep appreciation for everything we have accomplished together during your presidency, it is now time for you to pass the torch to a new generation of Democratic leaders,’ the lawmakers wrote. 

‘We must defeat Donald Trump to save our democracy, protect our alliances and the rules-based international order, and continue building on the strong foundation you have established over the past four years,’ they said.

‘At this point, however, we must face the reality that widespread public concerns about your age and fitness are jeopardizing what should be a winning campaign. These perceptions may not be fair, but they have hardened in the aftermath of last month’s debate and are now unlikely to change. We believe the most responsible and patriotic thing you can do in this moment is to step aside as our nominee while continuing to lead our party from the White House.’

Veasey is the first member of the Congressional Black Caucus, a group that has strongly backed Biden, to call for the president to step aside. 

A fifth House Democrat, Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois, separately urged Biden to drop out in an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune. 

‘It’s time for Joe Biden to pass the torch,’ Casten wrote.

‘[P]olitics, like life, isn’t fair. And as long as this election is instead litigated over which candidate is more likely to be held accountable for public gaffes and ‘senior moments,’ I believe that Biden is not only going to lose but is also uniquely incapable of shifting that conversation.’

Additionally, Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., on Friday called on Biden to suspend his presidential campaign. He is now the third Democratic senator to do so. 

‘While the decision to withdraw from the campaign is President Biden’s alone, I believe it is in the best interests of our country for him to step aside,’ Heinrich said in a statement. 

There are now 28 Congressional Democrats who have called on Biden to step aside. That number represents more than 10% of elected Democrats in Congress. 

Behind the scenes, more and more Democratic party officials, top donors and key Biden allies are reportedly urging the president to reconsider his decision to stay in the race. Should Biden drop out ahead of the Democratic National Committee convention in August, Vice President Kamala Harris is acknowledged to be in the best position to receive the party’s nomination — although some Democrats fear she would also lose to Trump, and prefer that a candidate unaffiliated with the current administration be nominated in an open convention.

Biden has made no public indication that he intends to step aside, and his campaign has forcefully denied all suggestions to the contrary. 

‘Absolutely the president is in this race, you’ve heard him say that time and again,’ Biden Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said Friday on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe.’ 

‘I’m not here to say this hasn’t been a tough several weeks for the campaign, there’s no doubt that it has been, and we’ve definitely seen some slippage in support. But it has been a small movement.’

Fox News Digital’s Julia Johnson contributed to this report.

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Netanyahu, Israel blast UN court decision over illegal settlements ruling: ‘Fundamentally wrong’

The United Nation’s top court has ruled Israel’s settlements in the Palestinian territories are illegal, and they must be removed immediately.

‘The State of Israel is under the obligation to bring an end to its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible,’ ICJ President Nawaf Salam said when he delivered the court’s findings on Friday, stressing that the ‘continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal.’ 

The opinion is merely advisory and is not legally binding. The court specifically aimed to provide its view on Israel’s policies and practices as well as the legal status of the settlements, the BBC reported. 

The court in May demanded Israel ‘immediately halt its military offensive’ against Hamas in Rafah, the Palestinian terrorist group’s final stronghold in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly rejected the court’s conclusion, arguing in a statement posted on X that ‘Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land, including in our eternal capital Jerusalem nor in Judea and Samaria, our historic homeland.

‘No absurd opinion in The Hague can deny this historical truth or the legal right of Israelis to live in their own communities in our ancestral home.’ 

The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a longer, more detailed statement through its spokesperson Oren Marmorstein, who posted on social media platform X that ‘Israel rejects the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that was published today regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.’ 

‘Unfortunately, the Court’s opinion is fundamentally wrong,’ Marmorstein wrote. ‘It mixes politics and law. It injects the politics of the corridors of the U.N. in New York into the courtrooms of the ICJ in The Hague.

‘The opinion is completely detached from the reality of the Middle East: While Hamas, Iran and other terrorist elements are attacking Israel from seven fronts … with the aim of obliterating it, and in the aftermath of the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, the opinion ignores the atrocities that took place on October 7, as well as the security imperative of Israel to defend its territory and its citizens,’ Marmostein continued.

‘It should be emphasized that the opinion is blatantly one-sided,’ Marmostein added. ‘It ignores the past: The historical rights of the State of Israel and the Jewish people in the Land of Israel.

‘It is detached from the present: from the reality on the ground and the agreements between the parties,’ he stressed. ‘And it is dangerous for the future: it distances the parties from the only possible solution, which is direct negotiations.’

Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and president at Human Rights Voices, told Fox News Digital the court’s opinion ‘literally throws out the Oslo Accords and U.N. Security Council resolutions.’

‘It is impossible to overstate the legal perversion from this U.N. Court,’ Bayefsky said. ‘It was read out by its president, who is a politician from Lebanon (whose name was on the ballot to be the prime minister of Lebanon in the last two elections), a country that doesn’t even recognize Israel’s right to exist. Incredibly, the court openly states it didn’t need to find any specific facts in violation of international law before reaching its conclusions, including before making the slanderous claim that Israel is guilty of the crime against humanity of apartheid. It took the court all of four mini-paragraphs to reach the apartheid conclusion.

‘The U.N. and its kangaroo court says it knows best — the same U.N. that today is controlled by a vicious antisemitic majority, elects the judges and chooses the poison, in this case, legal farce — which, make no mistake, has one goal: to devastate and destroy the Jewish state.’

Israel already suffered a legal blow from the International Criminal Court, a separate legal governing body in the Netherlands, in which Prosecutor Karim Khan filed applications for arrest warrants against Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, in addition to leaders of Hamas.

The State Department did not respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment by the time of publication.

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New poll reveals what Democrats think of Harris as president

With President Biden’s future uncertain, a majority of Democrats say the country would be in good hands if his vice president were to take over the White House. 

A new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about six in 10 Democrats believe that Vice President Kamala Harris would do a good job as president herself. About two in 10 Democrats don’t believe she would, and another two in 10 say they don’t know enough to say.

The survey comes as an increasing number of Democratic officials are publicly urging Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential election after his disastrous debate performance on June 27. Democratic officials are worried that voters don’t believe that the 81-year-old president is capable of performing his duties, and many have suggested that Harris or another candidate would fare better against the Republican nominee, former President Trump. 

Recent polls show Democratic voters have soured on Biden as well. A Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll of Massachusetts residents found that 64% of likely Democratic or Democratic-leaning voters want someone other than Biden to face off against Trump. The AP-NORC national survey likewise found that 65% of Democrats say Biden should drop out of the race. 

While Harris is the focus of several insider discussions for a plan B ticket, the vice president has maintained strong public support for Biden and defended him from slings and arrows thrown by panicked party officials speaking anonymously to the press.

But if Harris, 59, were to replace Biden atop the ticket, Democratic voters would mostly be happy with the younger candidate — a woman of color who could champion the party’s message on abortion rights, and a former state attorney general who could prosecute the Democratic Party’s case against voting for Trump.

Harris could also motivate key Democratic constituencies to show up on Election Day, including women and Black adults, who were more likely than Americans overall to say Harris would do well as president. 

Americans outside the Democratic Party were more skeptical of how Harris would perform in the Oval Office. Only about three in 10 Americans say Harris would be a good president. Nearly half said Harris would not do a good job, and two in 10 say they don’t know enough to have an opinion. 

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 four 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 six in 10. About one 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.

Harris is also better-known among Democrats than other potential candidates, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. 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.

The AP 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.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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5 more House Democrats call on Biden to drop out, third US senator

Five more House Democrats on Friday joined the growing number of congressional lawmakers who have called on President Biden to drop out of the 2024 election. 

In a joint statement, Reps. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., Marc Veasey, D-Texas, Chuy Garcia, D-Illinois and Marc Pocan, D-Wisc., urged Biden to ‘pass the torch to a new generation of Democratic leaders.’ 

‘Mr. President, with great admiration for you personally, sincere respect for your decades of public service and patriotic leadership, and deep appreciation for everything we have accomplished together during your presidency, it is now time for you to pass the torch to a new generation of Democratic leaders,’ the lawmakers wrote. 

‘We must defeat Donald Trump to save our democracy, protect our alliances and the rules-based international order, and continue building on the strong foundation you have established over the past four years,’ they said.

‘At this point, however, we must face the reality that widespread public concerns about your age and fitness are jeopardizing what should be a winning campaign. These perceptions may not be fair, but they have hardened in the aftermath of last month’s debate and are now unlikely to change. We believe the most responsible and patriotic thing you can do in this moment is to step aside as our nominee while continuing to lead our party from the White House.’

Veasey is the first member of the Congressional Black Caucus, a group that has strongly backed Biden, to call for the president to step aside. 

A fifth House Democrat, Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois, separately urged Biden to drop out in an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune. 

‘It’s time for Joe Biden to pass the torch,’ Casten wrote.

‘[P]olitics, like life, isn’t fair. And as long as this election is instead litigated over which candidate is more likely to be held accountable for public gaffes and ‘senior moments,’ I believe that Biden is not only going to lose but is also uniquely incapable of shifting that conversation.’

Additionally, Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., on Friday called on Biden to suspend his presidential campaign. He is now the third Democratic senator to do so. 

‘While the decision to withdraw from the campaign is President Biden’s alone, I believe it is in the best interests of our country for him to step aside,’ Heinrich said in a statement. 

There are now 28 Congressional Democrats who have called on Biden to step aside. That number represents more than 10% of elected Democrats in Congress. 

Behind the scenes, more and more Democratic party officials, top donors and key Biden allies are reportedly urging the president to reconsider his decision to stay in the race. Should Biden drop out ahead of the Democratic National Committee convention in August, Vice President Kamala Harris is acknowledged to be in the best position to receive the party’s nomination — although some Democrats fear she would also lose to Trump and prefer that a candidate unaffiliated with the current administration be nominated in an open convention.

Biden has made no public indication that he intends to step aside, and his campaign has forcefully denied all suggestions to the contrary. 

‘Absolutely the president is in this race, you’ve heard him say that time and again,’ Biden Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said Friday on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe.’ 

‘I’m not here to say this hasn’t been a tough several weeks for the campaign, there’s no doubt that it has been, and we’ve definitely seen some slippage in support. But it has been a small movement.’

Fox News Digital’s Julia Johnson contributed to this report.

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Ohio Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown urges Biden to end campaign

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, joined Democrats calling on President Biden to drop out of the 2024 race on Friday evening. 

‘At this critical time, our full attention must return to these important issues. I think the President should end his campaign,’ he said in a statement on X. 

According to Brown, ‘Over the last few weeks, I’ve heard from Ohioans on important issues, such as how to continue to grow jobs in our state, give law enforcement the resources to crack down on fentanyl, protect Social Security and Medicare from cuts, and prevent the ongoing efforts to impose a national abortion ban.’

‘I agree with the many Ohioans who have reached out to me,’ he added. 

Brown is the fourth Democratic senator to press Biden to step aside and the 34th Congressional Democrat to do so. 

The Ohio Democrat is in a particularly competitive race in November, where he will face Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, who is endorsed by former President Trump. 

Non-partisan political handicapper the Cook Political Report rated the Ohio Senate race as a ‘Toss Up,’ placing it alongside races in Montana, Nevada, and Michigan. 

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