James Peeler’s phone blew up with messages as he drove home from church in Texas. Reading a book on her couch in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Wendy Schweiger spied something on Facebook. After finishing a late-night swim in the Baltic Sea off Finland, Matti Niiranen clicked on a CNN livestream.
Each learned that President Joe Biden had abandoned his re-election bid minutes after he dropped a statement online without warning on a summer Sunday.
Eight days after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, it marked the second straight July weekend that a seismic American story broke at a time most people weren’t paying attention to the news. Biden’s announcement was a startling…
