President Biden delivered a strong opening address to welcome foreign leaders to NATO’s 75th anniversary summit in Washington D.C. Tuesday evening — a highly-anticipated speech as members of his own party and foreign leaders expressed concerns over his fitness for the presidency and continued re-election campaign. 

Biden spoke Tuesday evening to welcome foreign leaders to the summit, touting the strength of NATO, looking ahead to the future, and seeking to show strength amid chaos within the Democratic Party over his plans to continue running for re-election. 

Biden seemingly bounced back Tuesday evening, delivering a strong address without any major stumbles or setbacks. 

‘Today, NATO is more powerful than ever,’ Biden said Tuesday evening. ‘It’s good that we’re stronger than ever because this moment in history calls for our collective strength. Autocrats want to overturn global order, which is by and large, kept for nearly 80 years and counting. Terrorist groups continue to plot evil schemes, cause mayhem and chaos and suffering in Europe. Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine continues and Putin wants nothing less than Ukraine’s total subjugation to end Ukraine.’ 

The Russia-Ukraine war began under the Biden administration.

‘Ukraine can and will stop Putin,’ Biden said. ‘Russia will not prevail. Ukraine will prevail.’ 

Biden, during the address, announced a historic donation of air defense equipment to Ukraine. The U.S., Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, and Italy are coming together to provide Ukraine with equipment for five additional strategic air defense systems. 

Biden also gave NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg the Presidential Medal of Freedom Tuesday night as he opened the summit in Washington D.C. 

‘So much of the progress we made in the Alliance is thanks to the secretary,’ Biden said, adding that Stoltenberg has guided NATO through ‘one of the most consequential periods in its history.’ 

‘The whole world will reap the rewards of your labor for years to come in the form of security, opportunity and greater freedom,’ Biden said. ‘For these reasons, I am pleased to award you the highest civilian honor the United States can bestow—a Presidential Medal of Freedom.’ 

The three-day summit, which began Tuesday, will focus on ways to reassure Ukraine of NATO’s enduring support and offer some hope to its war-weary citizens that their country might survive the biggest land conflict in Europe in decades. NATO’s day-to-day work is led by Stoltenberg, the former prime minister of Norway, until he is replaced as secretary-general on Oct. 1 by outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

Biden’s address Tuesday night came at a consequential time for the future of his presidency and a potential second term. 

Biden and the White House have maintained that he will continue running his 2024 re-election campaign. 

Sources told Fox News Digital that Biden has been personally working the phones to call Democratic colleagues, supporters and donors to quell concerns — and the strategy appears to be working. 

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., came out in support of the president, along with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. 

Rank-and-file Democrats in the House also rallied behind the president, as well as a number of top Democratic senators. 

Biden also saw support from the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Monday night. 

However, Democratic sources told Fox News Digital that ‘the reality’ is that Election Day is just four months away, and the Democratic Party ‘can’t just parachute a replacement in that can beat Trump this late in the game.’

‘The reality is, it is too late in the game to replace the guy if we want to win — that’s it,’ the source told Fox News Digital.

Additionally, despite reports of top donors considering pulling their support, the source told Fox News Digital that those donors ‘have a multi-decade personal relationship’ with Biden.

‘There is loyalty there, and he has delivered on many pieces of the Democrat agenda,’ the source told Fox News Digital. ‘Kamala has not proven that she is a viable replacement — even though Biden has given her years of world leader meetings and more.’

House Democrats are still at odds with each other over how to handle President Biden’s re-election campaign after a closed-door meeting on Tuesday morning, as concerns grow over his viability as a candidate and his mental fitness for office.

Left-wing lawmakers were largely evasive when leaving the meeting at Democratic National Committee headquarters on Capitol Hill, telling crowds of reporters they had ‘no comment’ on what went on. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., avoided reporters by departing through an alternate entrance.

Others who have publicly expressed concerns about Biden’s candidacy said they did so during the meeting as well. Democrats who spoke with Fox News Digital characterized those discussions as ‘respectful.’

But lawmakers also conceded that they were on a rapidly-shrinking timeline to either mount a caucus-wide push against Biden or get in line behind him as the nominee. Democrats’ nominating convention, in Chicago, is in mid-August.

‘I explained how I came to the decision to go public with my concerns, about how I made a lot of calls, and behind the scenes, and tried to get my voice heard before going public,’ Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., one of six House Democrats who’s asked Biden to step aside, told Fox News Digital. 

Moulton said he also ‘addressed some of the concerns that people raised about what would happen next.’

‘I think that we… either pass the baton to the vice president or have some sort of makeup primary,’ Moulton said when asked to elaborate. ‘It’ll show the American public that we’re energetic. We’re willing to change. We’re listening and responding to the people’s concerns. And we’re willing to have a serious debate within our party about the path forward, something that Republicans are obviously unwilling to do.’

When asked how his comments were taken, he said, ‘I will tell you that everybody who spoke on either side of this issue was received respectfully.’

‘People were respectful, nobody booed or cheered, it was a serious conversation that I appreciate we’re able to have in a closed-door meeting,’ Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Colo., said when asked about disagreements.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, the first House Democrat to come out against Biden, said he also spoke up in the meeting. He told reporters, ‘I’ve had a tremendous outpouring of support in my district for the position I’ve taken. So many people saying, ‘Thank you for voicing this.’’

Other lawmakers were less willing to talk. Rep. Earl Blumenaur, D-Ore., told reporters, ‘I don’t do this in the media. It’s not helpful.’

At least six more House Democrats either declined to comment or simply did not respond when approached after the meeting by Fox News Digital.

Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, who has expressed concerns about Biden, told reporters the president has ‘got a lot of work’ to convince people he’s fit for candidacy.

All the lawmakers who Fox News Digital heard from said there was no consensus communicated by House Democratic leaders on how to move forward.

‘It was not about consensus… it was listening to discussions,’ said Rep. Lou Correa, D-Calif., who is emphatically behind Biden.

He told Fox News Digital he was not frustrated at those who spoke out against Biden, explaining, ‘I wanted to hear them.’

Pettersen told reporters, ‘I think that the path moving forward, you know, we’re still having discussions. But if Joe Biden doesn’t step aside, people will be united in support of the president.’

‘I think we just had a lot of, wide variety of perspectives and different pieces to highlight. There wasn’t one concise message,’ she said.

Similarly, Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., said on Monday morning that he would support Biden if he was ultimately declared the nominee in August.

Biden, for his part, has said multiple times that he will not step aside and that he is the best person to take on former President Trump.

But his disastrous debate performance late last month on CNN has brought concerns about his age and mental acuity to the forefront.

Rep. Jim Costa, D-Calif., said the matter should be solved ‘sooner than later.’

When asked about the timeline, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., pointed out that Congress only returned to session on Monday evening.

‘Obviously, everything has to be wrapped up [by August],’ he said.

The State Department is disputing a report from the Wall Street Journal claiming President Biden skipped out on a meeting with German high officials to catch some sleep.

The WSJ reported Monday that Germany had arranged a meeting between Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the Schloss Elmau resort in Bavaria following the June 2022 G-7 summit.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is alleged to have arrived without Biden to that early evening lounge meeting and announced that the president would not be attending because he had to go to bed, according to two sources speaking to the WSJ.

Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department for comment on the alleged incident.

‘That is absolutely not accurate,’ State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. ‘Secretary Blinken never said that or anything like it.’

The State Department gave an identical statement to the WSJ in the original report.

A source familiar with the 2022 meeting described the lounge gathering as informal and said Biden was never expected to attend.

Blinken has defended Biden in the weeks following his disastrous performance against former President Trump at the first presidential debate.

Speaking at a Brookings Institute event on July 1, Blinken claimed worldwide observers would not be dissuaded from supporting Biden due to his confused demeanor during the debate.

‘They’ve seen a president who’s reinvested America, reinvested America in the world, reinvested in these alliances, in these partnerships in ways that they seek and want,’ Blinken said.

He added that ‘confidence in American leadership has gone up dramatically’ over the course of Biden’s term in the Oval Office.

As doubts grow about President Biden’s mental acuity, the spotlight turns to whether he can step down as the presidential nominee while completing his first term, and what that would mean for Vice President Kamala Harris’ political future.

‘Vice President Kamala Harris owes the American people an explanation as to why she has not been honest about President Biden’s steep decline into incapacity,’ Mike Howell, executive director of the conservative advocacy group Heritage Action, told Fox News Digital.

‘She chose politics over national security and history will judge her for that decision.’

Howell added that Democratic lawmakers are unlikely to call for Biden to retire immediately and allow Harris to take the helm, because ‘to admit that is that they’ve basically been complicit in a lie for the last three and a half years,’ referring to Biden’s declining health.

‘Him stepping down is an implicit endorsement of Kamala Harris being the nominee, because she would be the incumbent president at that point, and so I think that factors into it,’ Howell said. ‘What’s happening right now is there’s just going to be a series of rounds of people increasingly calling for it, and obviously President Biden’s trying to resist those calls as much as possible. But I think it’s unavoidable that more and more do call.’

Despite the growing chorus of concerned lawmakers calling on Biden to suspend his re-election campaign due to his poor debate performance and fading vitality, Biden has repeatedly said he is not dropping out of the race.

‘Most of the Democrats who are questioning whether or challenging President Biden should run are in either swing districts or tough re-election races of their own, or they need independent and Republican votes,’ Democratic strategist Mustafa Rashed told Fox News Digital in an interview.

‘It’s tough,’ Rashed continued. ‘The advantage that the vice president has is that she’s been adjacent to the Oval Office for the last three and a half years, which is something that no one else can say. I would also say that she’s the only person that’s been nationally, publicly and thoroughly vetted right now, like some of the other candidates have not gone through the sort of vetting process that’s required to run for national office.’

Other potential Democratic candidates who have been floated as options to replace Biden include Gov. Gavin Newsom, of California, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, of Michigan.

When asked at a Biden-Harris campaign event in New Hampshire this week, Newsom said Harris would likely win in a hypothetical matchup against former President Trump. 

‘I have no doubt about that. And that’s from someone that’s also known her longer than most, before we were both in politics,’ Newsom said, The Associated Press reported. ‘But I don’t expect it’s going to come to that.’

Democrats also met behind closed doors Monday as pressure mounted on Biden to drop out of the race. 

Fox News learned that multiple Democrats on House committees expressed concerns about the viability of Biden continuing to run for re-election against Trump after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., held a virtual meeting with ranking Democrats on House panels Sunday afternoon.

Fox is told the consensus among most Democrats on the call who suggested Biden should abandon the race was that the party should focus on Harris as a potential successor.

Additionally, a recent CNN/SSRS poll shows Harris performing slightly better than Biden in a matchup against Trump.

House Republicans are already on the offense against Harris as a possible replacement for Biden’s candidacy should he step down from the race.

GOP lawmakers – in both safe red seats and swing districts being targeted by the left – dismissed Harris as a political threat to their chances in November, arguing she’s still tied to the same progressive Biden policies they believe are unpopular with voters.

Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y., who served as longtime chair of the New York Republican Party before coming to Congress, previously told Fox News Digital, ‘Kamala Harris is just as responsible for this administration’s failures, but she’s more incompetent.’

A swing-seat Republican who asked not to be named told Fox News Digital they were skeptical Harris would do better on the debate stage than Biden. 

‘I would say she’s the weakest part of the ticket right now, as bad as Biden is,’ that GOP lawmaker said.

Reps. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., Mark Takano, D-Calif., Don Beyer, D-Va., and Adam Smith, D-Wash., reportedly expressed privately that Biden should exit the presidential race as the Democratic nominee on Sunday. Most of them also reportedly said Harris should be the nominee, two people familiar with the meeting told The Associated Press. 

Following reports on the meeting, Beyer issued a statement saying he backs the president staying in the race. 

‘I support President Biden. I support the Biden-Harris ticket, and look forward to helping defeat Donald Trump in November,’ the representative said. ‘I was proud to host an event this week in Northern Virginia with the President, and will continue doing all I can to support the Biden-Harris campaign in Virginia and across the country.’

Fox News’ Elizabeth Elkind, Greg Wehner and Chad Pergram contributed to this report.

Former President Donald Trump published a screed on Tuesday warning Republican lawmakers that they have no choice but to pass the SAVE Act, warning ‘our whole voting system is under siege.’ 

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act would amend the National Voter Registration Act, requiring states to obtain proof of citizenship from voters for federal elections, and purging non-citizens from voter rolls. 

‘Republicans must pass the Save Act, or go home and cry yourself to sleep,’ Trump wrote on his proprietary social media platform Truth Social. 

He continued, ‘Non citizen Illegal Migrants are getting the right to vote, being pushed by crooked Democrat Politicians who are not being stopped by an equally dishonest Justice Department.’

Under the legislation, voters would be required to provide proof of citizenship via IDs and documentation such as a passport, a government-issued photo ID showing proof the individual was born in the U.S., military IDs, or a valid photo ID as well as documentation showing proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate, the legislation states. 

The Democratic leadership is urging its House members to vote against the bill in the lead-up to the vote, saying it would place ‘an extreme burden [on] countless Americans’ in order to vote. 

‘The Dems can’t win on their policies, the only way they can win is to CHEAT. They do it at every level of government, and they do it well. That’s how they get an incapacitated moron like Joe Biden elected,’ the former president said in his Truth Social post. ‘The Justice Department is CORRUPT and won’t do a thing to help. They have no shame!’

If the SAVE Act is successfully passed through the House, it faces an uphill battle in the Democrat-controlled Senate. 

Even if the bill overcame the upper chamber of Congress, President Biden has vowed to kill the legislation if asked to sign.

Trump ended his message with a threat to ‘pursue Election Fraudsters at levels never seen before’ if elected in November, saying such individuals would be ‘sent to prison for long periods of time.’

The former president seemed to specifically call out Facebook creator and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, saying, ‘We already know who you are. DON’T DO IT! ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!’

Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton contributed to this report.

Some lawmakers are making the case that the Biden presidency is a group effort in order to quell concerns over the president’s mental sharpness and health, as the party stands in disarray with some members considering strategies to dissuade President Biden from seeking re-election.

‘A presidency is more than just one man, one woman, it’s an administration,’ former Obama administration Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ last week. ‘I would take Joe Biden’s worst day at age 86, so long as he has people around him like Avril Haines, Sam Power, Gina Raimondo supporting him, over Donald Trump any day.’

The Wall Street Journal also published a report Monday that outlined how Biden’s ‘inner circle’ – made up of Democrat donors and aides – reportedly kept his signs of aging a secret. Republicans have been more openly skeptical of Biden’s closest aides around him, questioning whether Biden is really at the helm of the country’s leadership at all.

‘Donald Trump’s running on common sense, on restoring common sense versus the lunacy of the last four years in the far left and the shadow government that now is running our country with Joe Biden as its figurehead. That’s what he’s running against,’ Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ Sunday.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., – a strong Trump ally – echoed Rubio’s belief that there is a ‘shadow government’ made up of tight knit Democrat strategists, aides and lawmakers helping Biden behind the scenes. 

‘We’ve all known Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Obama’s been running the country along with [Secretary of State] Blinken and [National Security Advisor] Sullivan,’ Tuberville said on Fox News Channel’s ‘Sunday Morning Futures.’ ‘You can tell by Schumer’s actions, Pelosi’s actions, the first two years they were calling the shots.’

‘Hopefully, the people understand that they’ve had total control, not the president but Schumer and Pelosi and all the deep state,’ Tubrerville continued. ‘The deep state’s total control over this, and hopefully we can get control of it and get the Democrats out of power and get Trump and all the Republicans running this country.’

Congressional Democrats will hold caucus meetings on Tuesday regarding Biden’s re-election bid as the party becomes more concerned with the president’s ability to beat former President Trump in November. Lawmakers exiting the meetings have been tight-lipped, though at least one has said there is ‘no consensus’ regarding Biden.

For his part, Biden has repeatedly stated that he will not resign from the race. He issued a public letter to House Democrats on Monday demanding an ‘end’ to the party drama.

‘I am running. I am the leader of the Democratic Party. No one is pushing me out,’ Biden said, according to an aide who posted his comment on X, formerly Twitter, last week.

To prove he has the vitality to remain president another four years, the Biden-Harris campaign has organized a slew of nationwide campaign stops – including across swing states – for Biden to headline.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment but did not hear back by press deadline. 

Fox News Digital’s Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.