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President Joe Biden stepped down as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee on Sunday and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him at the top of the ticket.  

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” Biden said in a statement. “And 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.” 

In a separate statement, Biden called naming Harris as his running mate in 2020 “the best decision” he has made. 

“Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

Biden’s withdrawal from the race comes just over three weeks after his first presidential debate against former President Donald Trump. Biden’s halting and unsteady performance in the June debate was widely regarded as a debacle, sparking a chorus of calls from elected officials, donors and many prominent commentators for Biden, 81, to step aside and not run for a second term. 

Biden said he will serve out the remainder of his term and said he will “speak to the Nation” later this week in more detail about his decision.

In a statement, Harris said: “I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination.”

“Over the past year, I have traveled across the country, talking with Americans about the clear choice in this momentous election,” Harris said. “And that is what I will continue to do in the days and weeks ahead. I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party—and unite our nation—to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda.”

As Biden’s 2024 running mate, Harris is positioned to assume Biden’s place on the ticket — including assuming control of most of his campaign resources and infrastructure. 

In his statement, Biden touted his administration’s accomplishments over the past three and a half years. 

“Together, we overcame a once in a century pandemic and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We’ve protected and preserved our Democracy. And we’ve revitalized and strengthened our alliances around the world.” 

Biden thanked Harris for being “an extraordinary partner in all this work.”

Because Biden withdrew before Democratic delegates were set to cast their votes in a virtual roll call, delegates are now free to cast their votes for other candidates at the Democratic National Convention. 

Twice, Biden’s decisions not to seek the Democratic nomination for president have paved the way to Democratic women to go toe-to-toe with Trump. After Biden decided against running in 2016, Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the first woman to be a major party’s presidential nominee. Now, Biden passes the mantle to Harris to face off against  Trump with under four months to go until Election Day.  In a joint statement, former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton said they were “honored” to join Biden in endorsing Harris and will do “whatever we can to support her.”

“We’ve lived through many ups and downs, but nothing has made us more worried for our country than the threat posed by a second Trump term,” they wrote. “Now is the time to support Kamala Harris and fight with everything we’ve got to elect her. America’s future depends on it.”

Trump attacked Biden in a statement that did not mention Harris. 

“Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve – And never was! He only attained the position of President by lies, Fake News, and not leaving his Basement. All those around him, including his Doctor and the Media, knew that he wasn’t capable of being President, and he wasn’t,” Trump said in a Sunday statement on Truth Social, his social media platform. 

In a subsequent statement, Trump’s co-campaign managers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, slammed Harris as an enabler of Biden’s agenda, previewing how the Trump campaign plans to attack Harris in the general election.  

“Kamala Harris is just as much of joke as Biden is. Harris will be even WORSE for the people of our Nation than Joe Biden. Harris has been the Enabler in Chief for Crooked Joe this entire time,” they said. “They own each other’s records, and there is no distance between the two. Harris must defend the failed Biden Administration AND her liberal, weak-on-crime record in CA.” 

If Harris were to be elevated as the Democratic nominee, she would surely face her another level of intense scrutiny as Democrats weigh their next steps. 

Harris, who is Black and Indian-American, made history as the first woman and person of color to serve as vice president when she took office in 2021. 

Harris, a former U.S. senator and California attorney general, would be running to be the first woman and woman of color to be president. Harris would be the first president of Asian descent and second Black and multiracial president after Barack Obama. 

Harris, 59, was born in Oakland, California, to Shyamala Gopalan, a biologist and cancer researcher, and Donald Harris, an economist. She attended Howard University for her undergraduate degree and later earned a law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of Law. 

Harris saw a meteoric rise from local prosecutor to vice president in two decades. She began her career working in the Alameda and San Francisco district attorney’s offices before being elected as San Francisco’s district attorney in 2003. She was elected attorney general of California in 2010, and in 2016 she ran for and was elected to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by former Sen. Barbara Boxer. In 2020, Biden selected Harris as his running mate. 

In the vice president’s office, Harris’ portfolio has included voting rights and addressing the root causes of migration from the Northern Triangle Region of Central America — notoriously difficult policy issues for Democrats on which the White House made little progress. 

If nominated, Harris would be arguably the most forceful supporter of abortion rights to represent a major political party. As vice president, she has emerged as a vocal critic of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to eliminate federal abortion rights, as well as of subsequent state abortion bans. In March, Harris toured an abortion clinic in Minnesota, in what is believed to be the first such trip by a sitting president or vice president.

Harris’ emphasis on abortion — both as vice president and potentially as a candidate on top of the ticket — demonstrates the extent to which the party’s politics have shifted since Roe’s overturn, and how meaningfully Democrats have embraced the issue.

“If you had had a Democrat visiting an abortion clinic five or 10 years ago, that would have been really explosive,” said Mary Ziegler, an abortion law historian at the University of California Davis. “Because of Dobbs, the party as a whole is much more supportive of abortion rights than it was. A lot of things she’s done – she’s more supportive of abortion rights than her colleagues, but still within the party mainstream.”

Biden’s stepping aside ends a tumultuous period of chaos and tension among top Democrats over whether he should remain on the ticket. Several Democratic lawmakers and donors — including the prominent actor George Clooney — went public asking Biden to step down in the wake of the June 27 debate. Throughout, Biden and those in his camp flatly rejected calls from him to leave the ticket. But a series of sit-down interviews and a high-profile news conference at the NATO summit in Washington did little to quell worries over his continued viability. 

The movement to push Biden off the ticket briefly stalled after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on July 13. But on July 17, the same day Biden canceled a planned appearance in Las Vegas after testing positive for COVID-19, news outlets reported that top Democratic leaders including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had directly expressed their concerns to Biden about his viability at the top of the ticket.   

Biden’s exit marks the conclusion to a half-century in public service, one that Biden intended to continue with a second term in the White House. 

Biden, born in 1942 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, was elected to the U.S. Senate at age 29 in 1972. On Capitol Hill, he made his mark with his work on the Senate Judiciary Committee and on issues like foreign policy and criminal justice, including the Violence Against Women Act. 

On LGBTQ+  rights, his statement of support for marriage equality in 2012 was seen the critical push in forcing President Obama to come out in support of same-sex marriage, a moment that many queer Americans felt turned the tide for the LGBTQ+ rights movement in America. 

Biden also spent the bulk of his political career seeking the presidency. He ran for president twice before winning in 2020, first in 1988 and then again in 2008, when former President Barack Obama ultimately selected Biden as his running mate. After serving two terms as vice president, Biden decided against seeking the Democratic nomination for president in 2016, shortly after the death of his son Beau from cancer. 

Biden, viewing Trump as an existential threat to American democracy, decided in 2019, at age 76, to once again run for president. Biden emerged victorious out of a crowded field of primary candidates in early 2020 thanks in large part to the influence of Black voters and the powerful Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina. In turn, Biden selected Harris as his running mate and appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.