Panicking Democrats were speculating about whether Joe Biden should be replaced as their party’s nominee for US president following a disastrous debate performance that turned whispers about his age and fitness into a roar.

Biden’s shaky, raspy-voiced showing against Donald Trump at the first presidential debate in Atlanta on Thursday was widely panned as a disaster that, instead of assuaging fears about his mental acuity, amplified them on the biggest political stage.

Even before the torturous 90 minutes were over, senior Democratic figures and donors were calling or texting in despair and exploring the potential to draft a late alternative to Biden at August’s Democratic national convention, although elected officials remained publicly loyal to the president.

“Every Democrat I know is texting that this is bad,” Ravi Gupta, a former Barack Obama campaign aide, wrote on X. “Just say it publicly and begin the hard work of creating space in the convention for a selection process. I’ll vote for a corpse over Trump, but this is a suicide mission.”

On Friday, Biden appeared at a campaign rally in North Carolina, where he gave an entirely more spirited performance, landing his lines with much greater force than the previous night and attacking his opponent with vigour.

“Did you see Trump last night? It’s sincerely a new record for the most lies told in a single debate,” Biden told an enthusiastic crowd that spontaneously broke into chants of “Four more years”.

He challenged Trump on his lies about the economy, the pandemic, and the January 6 insurrection, called Trump a “one-man crime wave” and added: “The thing that bothers me most about him is that he has no respect for women or the law.”

Biden also reiterated his standard campaign promises to restore the right to abortion and to defend Medicare and social security, and added, in a pointed nod to his debate showing that had the crowd roaring its appreciation: “When you get knocked down you get back up.”

But observers were left wondering where Friday’s energetic Biden was the night before, after the president had spent nearly a week at the Camp David presidential retreat preparing for the debate. He even sold cans of water labeled “Dark Brandon’s Secret Sauce” on his campaign website, mocking suggestions from Trump and his advisers that he would use drugs to enhance his performance.

The debate’s early date and rules – no studio audience and muted microphones to prevent interruptions – had been requested by the Biden campaign, eager to bring voter’s attention to the discussion and the threat posed by Trump. They wanted the president to demonstrate strength and energy.

But the plan backfired spectacularly in Biden’s performance, which was punctuated by repeated stumbles over words, uncomfortable pauses and a quiet speaking style that was often difficult to understand. The president lost his train of thought at times, especially early on, and Trump was quick to capitalise: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

The former president projected confidence, even when he was blatantly wrong on the facts, and seemed younger and sharper than Biden. David Plouffe, a former campaign manager for Obama, told MSNBC: “They’re three years apart. They seemed about 30 years apart tonight.” He described Biden’s performance as a “Defcon 1 moment”.

Biden rallied somewhat later in the debate, launching some deeply personal attacks on his opponent, but it was too late to change his first impression. His campaign aides blamed his hoarse voice on a cold, but his split screen reactions to Trump – open mouth, eyes cast down – underlined his status as the oldest president in history.

US elections 2024: a guide to the first presidential debate

Biden’s surrogates were slow to enter the post-debate spin room in Atlanta and, when they finally emerged, they largely avoided questions from the press. Instead they railed against Trump’s long list of falsehoods during the debate, which were not flagged by CNN’s fact checkers.

At a Waffle House restaurant in Atlanta, Biden was asked whether he had any concerns about his performance. He replied: “No. It’s hard to debate a liar.”

But Democratic strategists and rank-and-file voters alike were publicly and privately questioning whether the party might yet swap him out for a younger standard bearer against Trump in November’s election.

Claire McCaskill, a former Democratic senator, told MSNBC that her phone was “blowing up” with senators, operatives and donors in deep alarm. “Joe Biden had one thing he had to do tonight, and he didn’t do it,” she said. “He had one thing he had to accomplish, and that was reassure America that he was up to the job at his age, and he failed at that tonight.”

McCaskill added: “I’m not the only one whose heart is breaking right now. There’s a lot of people who watched this tonight and felt terribly for Joe Biden. I don’t know if things can be done to fix this.”

Two influential New York Times columnists, Tom Friedman and Nick Kristof, expressed dismay at the showing and called on the president to bow out of the race.

Under current Democratic party rules it would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace Biden as the party’s nominee without his cooperation or without party officials being willing to rewrite its rules at the convention in Chicago.

The president won the overwhelming majority of Democratic delegates during the state-by-state primary process. Party rules state: “Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”

However, if polling suggests that Biden might hurt congressional candidates in down ballot races, donor money could dry up and pressure could mount on him to gracefully step aside. That might involve a delegation of party elders convening a meeting with the president and pleading with him to pass the torch.

Such a move would trigger a frenzied, potentially divisive contest for the nomination with possible contenders including vice-president Kamala Harris, California governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Maryland governor Wes Moore, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg and even former first lady Michelle Obama.

Steve Schmidt, a political strategist who worked on the election campaigns of Republicans George W Bush and John McCain, wrote on his Substack: “Joe Biden lost his presidency last night, but because it happened in June, it does not mean that Trump will win … It is time for Joe Biden to begin the preparations necessary to put the country first. They will require him to say the following: ‘I will not accept my party’s nomination for a second term.’”

Others, however, took the view that there is still time to recover after what was the earliest-ever presidential debate. Many voters have not yet tuned into an election that is still more than four months away. The Biden campaign announced that it has raised $14m on Thursday night and Friday morning – money that can be spent on advertising and swing state infrastructure.

Trump remains a hugely polarising figure with historic vulnerabilities, including his conviction last month in New York in a case involving hush money payments to the adult film performer Stormy Daniels, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his chaotic term in office. Biden described him as a “whiner” and “child” who cheated on his wife with “a porn star” and had the “morals of an alley cat”.

There is precedent for recovering from rough debate performances, including Obama’s rebound from a poor showing against Mitt Romney in 2012. John Fetterman, Democratic senator of Pennsylvania, went on to defeat a Republican rival in 2022 after struggling through a debate several months after experiencing a stroke.

Fetterman tweeted on Friday: “I refuse to join the Democratic vultures on Biden’s shoulder after the debate. No one knows more than me that a rough debate is not the sum total of the person and their record.”

Newsom, who was Biden’s most prominent surrogate in the Atlanta spin room, urged Democrats not to melt down. He said: “I think it’s unhelpful. And I think it’s unnecessary. We’ve got to go in, we’ve got to keep our heads high. We’ve got to have the back of this president. You don’t turn back because of one performance. What kind of party does that?”

In what several supporters described as a “night and day” difference from his performance in last night’s debate, President Joe Biden on Friday vowed to keep fighting against what he framed as an existential threat to America.

In his first campaign stop following the debate, Biden showed off a louder and more dynamic voice at the North Carolina state fairgrounds in Raleigh.

“I know what millions of Americans know,” Biden said. “When you get knocked down, you get back up.”

During the 15-minute speech in a sweltering building that saw at least one person faint, Biden ran through a list of issues from high-speed internet to border security, but spent a good deal of his time denouncing Donald Trump’s honesty and integrity.

“I don’t walk as easily as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to,” Biden said, addressing the widespread criticism of his Thursday performance. “But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.”

Repeating a line from the debate, he said of Trump, his rival for the White House, “I spent 90 minutes on a stage debating a guy who has the morals of an alley cat.” Biden added: “I think he [Trump] set a new record for the number of lies told at a single debate.”

Although there was enough empty room in some of the bleachers for people to move around easily, the crowd shouted an encouraging: “Yes, you can!” when Biden began to talk about how well he could do the job of president in what would be his mid-80s.

If some in the crowd came to the rally holding their breath, many seemed relieved to see more energy from the Democratic president.

“Night and day,” said Brenda Pollard, a delegate to the Democratic national convention from Durham, North Carolina. “I mean, to me, today was who he is. And there it is, just like I just said, he’s energized by the people. Last night he didn’t have that. That’s no excuse, but I think it played a factor in it.”

Pollard was one of the Biden supporters who met the president on the tarmac when his plane landed at Raleigh-Durham international airport at about 2am Friday.

Pollard said she would not consider nominating any other candidate but Biden at the convention and had not heard any “serious” talk about doing so, despite many voters, pundits and operatives suggesting that was the Democrats’ only way forward.

Biden played to the North Carolina crowd after he was introduced by the state’s popular and outgoing Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, who at one point was himself mentioned as a possible 2024 presidential candidate.

“I want you to know, I’m not promising not to take Roy away from North Carolina,” Biden said.

One of the hallmarks of Cooper’s time in office has been his negotiation with the state’s Republican-controlled legislature to expand Medicaid coverage last year. Margaret Kimber, a grandmother from Wendell, North Carolina, gave Biden much credit for the expansion as well.

“It helps with the insurance, the supplements are fantastic,” she said while leaning against her walker after the rally. “And without them, whew!”

Pollard also said that Biden’s support of social security and Medicare were some of the most important issues for her.

“The loans are for the next generation. That’s our future coming in,” she said. “But we’re seniors and we’ve invested in this country and we have paid in. And now we just want that. It’s not an entitlement. We paid for it. It’s ours. And President Trump wants to take it.”

Kimber said that the issues that matter most to the young people she knows are school safety and gun violence. She said she thought Trump’s focus on immigration restrictions was just an appeal to fear.

“Because people were pissed off that the borders were open, Trump is using that as a tool to scare the people of the United States, and he’s using scare tactics to make people think that if we don’t close the borders we’re going to be overrun,” Kimber said. “And we’re going to be overrun with guns and violence. And we already have guns and violence.”

Wesley Boykin, who ran as a Democrat for the state legislature in 2022 in rural Duplin county, said that education, safety and healthcare were the issues that drew him most to Biden. Boykin said that as a Black man, he felt fear when Trump was president and no longer has the same fear during the Biden administration.

Boykin also said the Raleigh speech was a welcome departure from what he called a “lackluster” performance by the president on Thursday, especially the first seven minutes.

“I concluded nine o’clock is not the appropriate time,” he said. “After he basically woke up – after that seven minutes – he was more like he was today. And I realized he didn’t get a great deal of sleep.”

Boykin and others said that economic issues were not as important to them in this campaign as issues of character. Biden hit Trump on both fronts, reusing his “morals of an alley cat” line and calling his challenger “Donald ‘Herbert Hoover’ Trump”, after the Republican president who was in office at the onset of the Great Depression.

Tina Bruner, a Democratic precinct secretary in Raleigh and mother of three school-age children, said Biden’s handling of the pandemic demonstrated both his character and what she said was his superior economic policy.

“The way Trump handled the pandemic was terrifying, and I immediately felt like we’re going to make it out of this whenever Joe took over. The vaccine rollout happened and the way school lunches were funded for everyone. I don’t think I could have counted on schoolchildren to be fed by Trump.”

“So, yes, my life definitely felt safer, my family felt safer because of Joe Biden,” she said.

A Canadian woman who fraudulently claimed her daughters were Inuit has been sentenced to three years in jail, in what is believed to be the first ever custodial sentence for a “Pretendian”.

Karima Manji, whose daughters accessed more than C$150,000 in benefits intended for Inuit, was sentenced on Thursday, after pleading guilty to fraud in February.

Nunavut justice Mia Manocchio said the case “must serve as a signal to any future Indigenous pretender that the false appropriation of Indigenous identity in a criminal context will draw a significant penalty”.

In recent years, Canada has grappled with a wave of cases in which people falsely claim Indigenous identity. Many of those instances feature vague and questionable affirmations of First Nations or Métis ancestry. Instances of Inuit fraud –and ones in which people successfully obtained official identity cards – are rarer.

According to an agreed statement of facts, Toronto resident Karima Manji submitted paperwork for her daughters Amira and Nadya in 2016 to obtain Inuit identity.

Canada’s Inuit population of around 70, 000 people, mostly lives in Inuit Nunangat, the vast northern homeland that spans more than 3m sq km.

Manji, 59, lived briefly in Iqaluit, the territorial capital, in the 1990s. But her daughters Nadya and Amira were born in Ontario and have no connection to Inuit or to the lands of Nunavut.

To deceive those reviewing the application, Manji claimed that she had adopted the pair, who she said had been born to an Iqaluit woman named Kitty Noah.

Despite going through a vetting review by community members intended to prevent fraudulent enrolment, Manji’s application was approved by Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, NTI, which oversees the process.

Amira and Nadya, 18 years old at the time, quickly used their newly acquired Inuit identity to access money from the Kakivak Association, described in court documents as “an organization serving Inuit by … providing sponsorship funding to Baffin Inuit for education-related expenses.”

Between September 2020 to March 2023 Nadya and Amira received C$158,254.05 in benefits from Nunavut organizations, according to the agreed statement of facts. A further C$64,413 was on hold for Amira Gill in the spring of 2023, but was not paid out.

According to a recent feature in Toronto Life, Nadya and Amira were vocal about their Inuit identity while at university. The pair started an online business, Kanata Trade Company, purportedly run by “twin Inuit sisters”.

Their mother, Karima, was the CEO and the business, which sold items designed by Indigenous craftspeople, was certified by the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business.

But questions swirled over the sisters’ past and their non-existent ancestral ties to Nunavut.

On 30 March, NTI put out a public statement that it was “aware of possible fraudulent enrolment of Amira and Nadya Gill” and that Kitty Noah, who Manji had claimed was the birth mother, had “initiated the process to have Amira and Nadya removed from the Inuit enrolment list”.

NTI, which ensures the terms of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement is fully implemented, said the case of the Gill sisters was the first of its kind. The organization defended the “robust” enrollment process in which community members review applications “and make each decision carefully, after reviewing relevant supporting evidence of eligibility”.

In September 2023, Iqaluit RCMP charged Manji and her daughters with fraud over $5,000. In February, the crown dropped charges against the twins after Manji pleaded guilty.

In sentencing on Thursday, Manocchio rejected Crown’s recommendation for a suspended sentence, telling the court “only a penitentiary term” would fit the scope of the fraud.

“Ms Manji has victimized her own children … her own daughters who have been severely compromised by her crimes,” Manocchio said.

Manji has returned C$130,000 and still owes C$28,254 to the Kakivak Association.

“NTI is not the true or ultimate victim … the true victim of Ms. Manji’s crime are the Inuit of Nunavut,” Manocchio said during sentencing.

“I just feel better, knowing that it’s a message sent to anyone that’s trying to defraud Indigenous, Inuit, First Nations,” Noah Noah, Kitty’s son, told CBC News following the sentencing, adding he was “very pleased” with the outcome. “It’s a good day.”

Manji, had previously been convicted of fraud while working for a charity, but had never served a prison sentence before – something that Manocchio said played a role in the sentencing, adding that the sentence should “serve as a signal” to others who pretend to be Indigenous for financial gain.

“Fraudsters pay attention to what happens to other fraudsters.”

European politicians, already drowning in multiple crises of their own, were left shell-shocked and aghast at Joe Biden’s meandering performance in Thursday’s presidential debate, aware that a second Trump term had drawn that much nearer – with all that this implies for the rise of populism in the continent, the future of Nato, and for Ukraine and the Middle East.

The voices of despair came from across the mainstream political spectrum, interspersed with the odd call for Europe to prepare even more intensively for a Trump second coming.

“American democracy killed before our eyes by gerontocracy,” Guy Verhofstadt, a member of the European parliament and a former prime minister of Belgium, posted on X.

The German CDU foreign policy specialist Norbert Röttgen said: “This night will not be forgotten. The Democrats have to rethink their choices now. And Germany must prepare at full speed for an uncertain future. If we don’t take responsibility for European security now, no one will.”

The Polish foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, issued the most delphic advice about the importance of planning succession. “Marcus Aurelius was a great emperor but he screwed up his succession by passing the baton to his feckless son Commodus (he from the Gladiator). Whose disastrous rule started Rome’s decline. It’s important to manage one’s ride into the sunset.” Whether Barack Obama or Biden was cast in the role of Aurelius was unclear.

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri, the director of the Americas programme at the Chatham House thinktank, who is deeply immersed in Democratic politics, struggled to make a case for Biden’s defence, even though she said she regarded his policy performance as strong.

“It is universally agreed this was a very challenging debate,” she said. “President Biden had a very slow start and struggled throughout – admittedly in a very difficult format. To be in a room for 90 minutes without any audience is gruelling and not what President Biden was able to meet.”

Although she accused Trump of engaging in fact-free debate on pretty much every issue, she felt the debate “will leave most Americans despairing”.

In a tweet she was more blunt, saying: “America and Americans are best when they see a problem, seize on it, find a solution. Make it happen.”

Carl Bildt, a co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations thinktank and a former Swedish prime minister, said Biden’s performance was so bad that the ECFR’s six published warnings about Trump’s foreign policy was “now required reading”.

One of the warnings is that a deep nightmare lurks beneath the potential foreign policy shocks that Trump would cause. Bildt said an international coalition “could emerge as a framework for populists in Europe to establish special ties with Trump’s Washington. Trump’s re-election might well embolden the populist right in Europe to obstruct common EU policies and initiatives more forcefully.”

Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, of Germany’s liberal FDP, told the Rheinische Post: “The fact that a man like Trump could become president again because the Democrats are unable to put up a strong candidate against him would be a historic tragedy that the whole world would feel.”

Indeed, one of the messages being conveyed directly to the White House was that this was about not just America but the world.

In Italy, the former prime minister Matteo Renzi said simply: “Joe Biden can’t do it.” He wrote on X that Biden had served the US with honour, adding: “He doesn’t deserve an inglorious ending, he doesn’t deserve one. Changing horses is a duty for everyone.”

Ukraine’s foreign ministry gave no response to Trump’s ominous remarks during the debate that Kyiv had taken too much military aid from the US, and his reference to Volodymyr Zelenskiy as a “salesman”.

Trump repeated his claim that had he been president in 2022, Russia would not have launched the full-scale invasion, and he said a peace settlement would be agreed between his election in November and inauguration in January. Moscow affected indifference, saying Vladimir Putin had not woken up specially to watch the debate.

The Russian official press was less merciful. “Biden unexpectedly misspoke multiple times and stammered. Democrats have already called his performance a failure,” the state news agency RIA concluded while leaving Trump free of criticism.

In the UK, Rishi Sunak said the only debate he was interested in was the one he was holding with Keir Starmer about Labour’s plans to raise taxes.

Silence emanated from David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, whose imminent period in office is destined to be defined by America’s choice in November. He has made strenuous efforts to meet all shades of Republicanism, and even argued that Trump may not be as bad as some predictions.

But one of Lammy’s closest allies, Ben Rhodes, who was among Barack Obama’s most senior aides, posted: “Just think about what that debate looked like to people and leaders around the world … Telling people they didn’t see what they saw is not the way to respond to this.”

The far-right National Rally (RN) has strengthened in final polls, including one suggesting it could be on course for a historic parliamentary majority, as candidates fought for votes on the last day of campaigning before the first-round ballot in France’s most momentous election for decades.

Two days before Sunday’s ballot, two polls on Friday showed Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration, France-first party pulling steadily further ahead in a race it has led since President Emmanuel Macron called the shock ballot almost three weeks ago after the defeat of his centrists in the European parliamentary election.

Official campaigning for the first round vote ends at midnight on Friday, with no political activity allowed on Saturday. Campaigning resumes on Monday for a final five days before a decisive second round ballot on 7 July in which the party could take control of France’s government for the first time.

One poll, for Les Echos newspaper, showed RN could win 37% of the national vote, two points more than a week ago, while another, for BFM TV, estimated the far-right party was on course for 260-295 seats – potentially giving it an outright majority.

RN, which has pledged to boost spending power, slash immigration and restore law and order, “cannot only envisage a relative majority, but we cannot exclude – far from it – an absolute majority” of 289 deputies, Brice Teinturier, the deputy director of a third polling agency, Ipsos, told Agence France-Presse.

The New Popular Front (NFP), a broad but fractious leftwing alliance dominated by the Unbowed France (LFI) of the veteran radical left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, was on 28%, and Macron’s centrist bloc, known as Together, on 20%.

Accurate seat forecasts are difficult because the outcome depends on second-round results in France’s 577 constituencies, many of which could be three-way races and affected by tactical alliances and withdrawals aimed at blocking the far right.

“Of course I want to avoid the extremes, especially the far right, being able to win,” the prime minister, Gabriel Attal, said on Friday. Macron, who has called both the left and far right extreme, also suggested at an EU summit on Thursday that prospective Together MPs would back moderate left candidates against far-right ones.

The president also criticised far-right “arrogance”, saying it had “already allocated all the government jobs” and questioned his constitutional role as military commander-in-chief. “Who are they to explain what the constitution should say?” he asked.

A hung parliament, with Macron’s forces squeezed between two hostile bigger blocs, would lead to near-certain deadlock, while an RN majority would deliver a fraught cohabitation with a party radically opposed to the president on almost everything.

Le Pen hinted at the kind of rows that could arise on Friday, saying it was “the prime minister’s prerogative, not the president’s” to name France’s next European commissioner – currently the internal markets commissioner, Thierry Breton.

RN’s youthful president, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, has said he will not take up the post of prime minister unless his party, which has toned down some of its anti-EU positions and pledged fiscal responsibility, wins an absolute majority.

But the party remains vague about the cost of its promises, which include cutting VAT on all energy and, longer term, abolishing Macron’s pension reform to return the state pension age to between 60 and 62 and exempting all under-30s from income tax.

RN also aims to abolish the right of babies born in France to be French, which would almost certainly be declared unconstitutional by France’s constitutional council, and to create a “national preference” for some welfare payments in breach of EU rules.

Analysts say the far-right party has benefited from public anger at Macron, whose pro-business reforms have spurred the economy but who is seen by many voters as having ignored their concerns about the cost of living and worsening public services. His popularity has sunk so low allies suggested he take a backseat in the campaign.

In a televised debate on Thursday evening, Bardella sought to reassure voters about RN’s foreign policy, saying he would “not let Russian imperialism absorb an allied state like Ukraine”, although he was opposed to sending long-range missiles to Kyiv.

The RN president dismissed as “utterly false” reports in French media that as many as 100 RN candidates standing in the election had been found to have made “racist, antisemitic and homophobic comments” in the past.

Separately on Thursday, France’s media watchdog, Arcom, warned one of the country’s leading radio stations, Europe 1, over a two-hour elections talkshow presented every morning during the campaign by the controversial host Cyril Hanouna.

Hanouna, whose evening TV show has been fined a total of €7.5m (£6.36m) by Arcom for breaching rules on political balance, recently told listeners the leftist NFP alliance sought “the destruction of the republic, of the country and of our civilisation”.

The regulator said Hanouna’s show was systematically favouring RN and treating leftwing parties “in a systematically critical and virulent manner, in terms that were often derogatory and outrageous”, reflecting “a lack of measure and honesty”.

US voters woke up to post-debate reviews of the first Biden-Trump debate with headlines that echoed Democrats’ anxiety that the incumbent president is too cognitively weak and physically frail to sustain another five months of political campaigning or another term in office.

Those anxieties, multiple outlets reported, were being reflected in pressure from Democratic donors and former Democratic officials who are now openly talking about replacing Biden with an alternative presidential candidate at the party’s convention in Chicago in August.

“A Fumbling Performance, and a Panicking Party “, said the New York Times on its front page. Columnist Nicholas Kristof, a centrist Democrat, said that Biden is a “good man” who had capped his political career with a successful presidential term… “but I hope he reviews his debate performance Thursday evening and withdraws from the race”.

Kristof floated Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Gina Raimondo, the US secretary of commerce, as potential candidates “in a good position to defeat Trump in November”.

The Washington Post headlined: “Biden stumbles as Trump spreads falsehoods” , noting that Biden had “struggled through a raspy voice and uneven delivery” while former president Trump had respondent to Biden’s “charged and deeply personal attacks” with “a blizzard of personal gibes and falsehoods”.

The Wall Street Journal said: Democrats Privately Discuss Replacing Biden on Presidential Ticket”, and noted that Biden’s “halting performance left the Democratic Party in turmoil, with officials trying to sort through the president’s prospects after an appearance in which he stumbled over words, stammered through many answers and elevated widespread voter concerns that he is too old to serve”.

The Los Angeles Times was kinder. Under the headline “Biden’s verbal stumbles, Trump’s ‘morals of an alley cat’”, the west coast newspaper said November’s candidates “called each other criminals and liars and looked at each other with open disdain”. But, the paper said: “Biden’s early struggles with his words and the lack of timbre in his voice have instead created panic among Democrats”.

The Guardian reported: “Defcon 1 moment’: Biden’s debate performance sends Democrats into panic”, while internationally the headlines have been scarcely different. Left-leaning Israeli paper Haaretz said: “Meandering Biden, Pathological Trump: The Worst Possible Presidential Debate Was a Sad Night for America”.

“Last night, Biden lost. Trump lost. American democracy lost. And although televised presidential debates rarely change the trajectory of an election, for Democrats, the spectacle on CNN was the sum of all their fears”, Haaretz said.

The South China Morning Post led on what the candidates positions’ meant for China, noting that Biden “took aim” at Trump’s proposed tariff hikes while Trump had accused his rival of being “afraid to deal with China and raising the risk of global conflict”.

The Australian said that Democrats are in a “tailspin” and “furious” at Biden’s “poor performance” as “attention quickly turned to whether there needed to be a new candidate selected for the party at its August convention”.

El Pais said the night brought “Biden’s misfortune brought CNN and Fox News together”, adding that “the president’s poor performance gives way to Democratic voices calling for an urgent replacement before the elections”.

And in France, Le Monde described “the sinking of Joe Biden during the televised debate against Donald Trump” – a debate that had “turned into a disaster for the Democratic president, who appeared on several occasions overwhelmed, stumbling over words, unable to follow his train of thought”.

And the BBC headlined, “Biden’s incoherent debate performance heightens fears over his age”. Correspondent Anthony Zurcher wrote that US voter concerns about Biden’s age and fitness for office heading into the debate had been exacerbated. “To say that this debate did not put those concerns to rest may be one of the greatest understatements of the year,” Zurcher wrote.

But CNN, which hosted the debate and had come under intense political pressure over fears that the moderators would slip into political bias over its handling of the candidates, was perhaps clearest of all.

“Biden’s disastrous debate pitches his reelection bid into crisis”, it said, noting that if Biden loses his bid for re-election in November, “history will record that it took just 10 minutes to destroy a presidency”.

“It was clear a political disaster was about to unfold as soon as the 81-year-old commander in chief stiffly shuffled on stage in Atlanta to stand eight feet from ex-president Donald Trump at what may turn into the most fateful presidential debate in history”, the cable news outlet said. In a snap poll of viewers, 67% said that former president was the winner.

US elections 2024: a guide to the first presidential debate

Heavy rain and thunderstorms have caused havoc in Switzerland and northern Italy over the past week. Switzerland was badly hit on Friday 21 June, with downpours delivering more than 100mm across many areas – more than half of this within one hour.

Flash flooding and landslides swept away cars and houses, with at least one person known to have died, alongside widespread damage to transport infrastructure. The mountain resort of Zermatt was entirely cut off due to a combination of flood water, road closures and suspended train services.

Unsettled conditions persisted around the Alpine region over the weekend, before pushing farther south into Italy, bringing similar downpours to Emilia-Romagna and northern Tuscany on Tuesday. Between 100mm and 200mm of rain fell across much of the area, which caused rivers to overflow their banks and resulted in widespread flooding. Elsewhere, water levels in Lake Garda reached their highest level since 1977, while a strong thunderstorm in Veneto produced a tornado near Rovigo, which brought down several trees and damaged buildings.

Heatwaves around the northern hemisphere have continued to dominate weather headlines. Temperatures in Saudi Arabia soared above 50C (122F) at times last week as millions undertook the hajj pilgrimage, with more than 500,000 people taken to hospital and up to 1,300 deaths subsequently attributed to heat-related illnesses.

Several Balkan countries experienced power cuts last Friday as temperatures in the high 30Cs spurred a spike in the use of air conditioning units. In the US, more than 100 million people were affected by heat alerts over the past week, with daily temperature records smashed in some north-eastern states on Friday and Death Valley in California hitting 49C on Sunday. In Pakistan, hundreds of deaths have been reported since the weekend as temperatures widely exceeded 40C each day.

In the southern hemisphere, however, parts of Australia have seen an early cold snap this winter. Parts of Queensland recorded overnight temperatures more than 10C below average, while the south-east may have experienced its coldest start to winter for several decades. Lows hit 7.7C in Brisbane, 2.2C in Melbourne, and -3.3C in Canberra. Minimum temperature records for June were broken in at least five places as it dropped below freezing. Several places in Victoria and South Australia recorded their coldest June day in decades. Temperatures stubbornly refused to rise above single figures.

Joe Biden won the Democratic primaries earlier this year but does not officially become the party’s candidate for president until endorsed at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which takes place from 19-22 August.

There is no formal mechanism to replace him as the presumptive nominee, and such a move would be the first time a US political party has attempted to do so in modern times.

In effect, the only option would be for Biden to agree to step aside and allow the delegates he won in the primaries – who vote to nominate a candidate at the Chicago convention – to choose someone else.

There is no legal requirement for delegates to vote for the person who won in the primaries, but they are asked to vote in a way that “in all good conscience reflects the sentiments of those who elected them”.

Were Biden to step aside, he may try to name someone – most likely his vice-president, Kamala Harris – as his preferred candidate, which would carry some weight with delegates but would not be binding.

The most drastic course of action open to Biden – resigning the presidency – would make Harris president. But that would not automatically make her the Democratic nominee for 2024.

If a candidate were to be chosen at the Chicago convention that would make what is conventionally a highly choreographed event, where a party presents its nominee to the public over several days, into a much more volatile open, or contested, convention – a rarity in modern US politics. About 700 party insiders, who may not be united, would have the choice of picking a new candidate. They would then have only three months to unite behind and campaign for them before the November election.

There is no clear frontrunner, but here are some possible options:

Kamala Harris

The most obvious pick would be Biden’s vice-president. She has been widely criticised for not carving out her own role in the Biden administration and has poor polling approval ratings, suggesting she would struggle against Donald Trump in the glare of an election campaign. The 59-year-old was backing Biden after the debate, but may be the easiest for the party to install as a replacement. Moreover, if Biden should choose to resign now, Harris would automatically become president.

Gavin Newsom

The 56-year-old California governor was in the spin room on Thursday night talking down any alternatives to Biden as nominee, saying it was “nonsensical speculation”. He had a primetime debate last year with the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, which could be a presidential match-up of the future, and has made a point of supporting Democrats in elections away from his home state, which looked, at times, like a shadow White House campaign.

J B Pritzker

The 59-year-old governor of Illinois would be one of the wealthiest of possible picks. He can flourish his credentials of having codified the right to abortion in Illinois and declaring it a “sanctuary state” for women seeking abortions. He has also been strong on gun control, and legalised recreational marijuana.

Gretchen Whitmer

The Michigan governor, 52, was on the shortlist for VP pick for Biden in 2020, and a strong showing in the midterms for the Democratic party was in part attributed to her governership. She has been in favour of stricter gun laws, repealing abortion bans and backing universal preschool.

Sherrod Brown

The 71-year-old would be the oldest of the alternate picks, but is still seven years younger than Trump. It was considered a surprise when he did not have a tilt for the Democratic nomination for 2020, at the time saying remaining as Ohio’s senator was “the best place for me to make that fight” on behalf of working people. A strong voice on labour rights and protections, he has also spoken defending IVF and abortion.

Dean Phillips

A candidate during the Democratic primaries earlier this year, he picked some backers but failed to appeal to the broader party, winning no contests, and so is unlikely to be a factor if Biden steps down.

Stellan Skarsgård is speaking to me from his cabin, outside Stockholm, and why shouldn’t he look relaxed and happy, in those clement, sun-dappled surrounds? But it is so disconcerting. His performance in What Remains, as a battle-scarred police officer, trying to keep hold of his family, his bearings and his scepticism in the face of a criminological modernity that puzzles him, joins a body of knotty work that UK audiences would probably date back to Breaking the Waves, Lars von Trier’s 1996 classic. His smallest facial gesture speaks fathomless emotion. I am a huge Mamma Mia! fan – in which he plays Bill Anderson – so I have seen Skarsgård smile, but even then, not all the time.

What Remains is based, loosely, on a famous case in Sweden: it was the 90s, and the so-called “retrieved memory” technique was huge, even though in the US, where it was developed, it had already been disallowed as reliable evidence. “All psychologists in Sweden were using retrieved memory at the same time, a lot of men were put in jail for violating their children,” Skarsgård says. “It’s really the fabrication of memory. It was very optimistic, to think you can just open up the memory and look at it. Every divorce you’ve been through, you’ll know, the truth isn’t exactly as everybody says.”

This came to a head in the 90s, with the case of Mads Lake, the long-term resident of a psychiatric hospital, who has definitely been abused as a child and has himself “committed offences against children, we don’t know if he’s raped one, but it’s a terrible mess”, says Skarsgård. Told in austere but beautiful landscapes, bleak Formica interiors, freighted pauses and this small cast, chasing one another towards an impossible certainty, the film is exquisitely disorienting. A folie à deux between Mads and the psychologist Anna Rudebeck (played with quiet intensity by Andrea Riseborough) led Lake, Rudebeck and Skarsgård’s policeman, Soren Rank, to near certainty that Lake was, in fact, Sweden’s first serial killer.

Lake is played by Skarsgård’s son Gustaf, one of four acting sons including Alexander and Bill (Stellan has eight children in total). Gustaf shares the Skarsgård magnetism but is emphatically not playing this for charisma: greasy, furtive and confused, his distress comes powerfully off the screen.

“I’m full of happiness watching him work,” Skarsgård says of his son, “because he’s so good. I don’t see him suffering, I know he enjoys it. We’re actors, for fuck’s sake.” The family is very close: “There’s a certain competition between my sons, but not in the sense that they don’t appreciate each other’s success or have any grudge against each other.” They all live within five minutes of each other in Stockholm, like Swedish arthouse Waltons. It wasn’t deliberate, he says, raising so many actors. “I didn’t care what they became when they grew up, they could do anything. But obviously they saw that I had fun doing the acting stuff, so they became actors. They’re all very different. I am amazed how different they can be from each other, having the same parents. Well, some of them have the same parents.”

What Remains was written by Everett-Skarsgård, and she and the director, Ran Huang, had Gustaf in mind before they cast Stellan. “I couldn’t not be involved, because it was in my home. My wife was writing it and she was tearing her hair out all the time. I don’t usually mix my private life with my professional life. You can get very tied up, and eventually it starts conflicts that you can’t handle. But I couldn’t say no to working with that dark material, and with Gustaf.”

If the case gripped Sweden in the 90s, it was partly because the country had never had a serial killer, which will come as news to fans of Scandi noir. The main thing I know about the land block, from its cultural exports, is how incredibly good, and experienced, its fictional detectives are, particularly at finding serial killers. “And we don’t have one! We still haven’t had a serial killer. So we don’t know what it is,” Skarsgård says.

“The Scandi noir thing is pretty silly, I must say,” he adds. “I did one of the first Scandi noir films, Insomnia – it didn’t have that label at the time. Marketers, they want to label everything.” While he has done a number of crime stories, he says: “This is only my second policeman. The first one was in River. I don’t like police series, but Abi Morgan had written such a beautiful script, it was not about police work, it was about human beings. And I also said: I can’t say the police lines. You’ve got to have someone else say them.” Wait, what? “You know, ‘Download the CCTV’, ‘Check his bank accounts’, all that stuff. I can’t say things like that without laughing.”

In real life, Sweden is a low-crime nation of peace lovers, or at least, it was. “It is changing, that’s the sad thing,” he says. “We used to be seen as a very wealthy country with very happy people. And, of course, a neutral country. But now we’re a member of Nato, we have doubled our arms budget. Like all of Europe. Everybody’s screaming to kill, kill, kill.” He continues: “Everybody is so excited now, by war. They’re showing the prime minister of Denmark and the prime minister of Sweden, and they’re sitting in fighting planes, and they’re showing off the latest submarine, and their pride in the Swedish rocket gun. There’s a pride in weapons that we were once ashamed of before.”

If this feels like a swerve, from the dark and contemplative What Remains, to Nato and the perils of the future, it’s not surprising to Skarsgård, for whom it is obvious that art should be “the place for refugees, the dropouts, the insane people, the homosexuals. We have to defend our outsider values.”

That has been a constant thread in Skarsgård’s career, risk-taking and rebellion, which he ventriloquises through Von Trier, and Breaking the Waves. “I felt that Lars was a very radical man. He said, I know what films I’m making now. I’m making the films that haven’t been made. I felt excited. It was dangerous and shocking in so many ways. And you didn’t think you could make films like that any more. Or, ever. He is truly original, he can’t do anything normal.”

But you wouldn’t call Skarsgård an intellectual purist – there’s plenty of Pirates of the Caribbean in his long career, as well as Marvel films and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – and he insists on the profundity of having a laugh, as was the case on Mamma Mia!. “As soon as I gave up any ambition for my singing and dancing, I realised the story: the quality was not the story; the script was not the story; it was that you saw a lot of actors having fun together, and it was very contagious.”

“As an actor,” Skarsgård says, “you’re don’t create your own art, you’re a reproductive artist, in a way. But I feel very zen about it. I’ve not been too pretentious about my arthouse films. I enjoy them, I think they’re delicious. I’m approaching my death now,” he says, cheerfully. “There’s a limit to the number of roles I’ll get, limited time. I want to continue doing what I’ve done, making the things that haven’t been made.”

If you go down to the sea today, there’s a good chance you will find something you’ve never seen before. With more than 10,000 miles of coastline and a rich mix of habitats, the Great British seaside is the perfect place for wildlife encounters. Whether you fancy a spot of beachcombing, rock pooling, bird watching or fish following, there’s plenty to keep you busy. With a few simple pointers on where and how to look, there are hundreds of coastal species to find. Grab a pair of wellies or a wetsuit and dive mask and the British coast is all yours to explore.

Tropical lookalikes

Go for a snorkel around shallow rocks and seaweeds and keep an eye out for colourful fish that would fit right in on a tropical coral reef. Corkwing wrasse (Symphodus melops) males are usually the flashiest of their species. They can grow up to 25cm long and have gleaming green and red stripes scribbled across their faces. Their bodies are splotched in blue, red and orange.

You might spot a male picking up chunks of seaweed in his mouth and carrying them off to his expertly crafted nest. Corkwing wrasse select up to 10 different seaweed types to decorate different parts of their nests including soft seaweeds for females to lay their eggs on and encrusted pink seaweeds around the edges that act like living cement and keep growing, knitting the nest structure together.

Females are less flamboyant, although on their underside they have an electric-blue egg-laying tube. A few small males adopt a different life to the nest makers and pretend to be females with muted colours. They sneak up to nests and fertilise clutches of eggs without getting chased off by the guardian male.

Rock stars

When the tide is at its lowest point, especially during spring tides around the new and full moon, you’ll find sea creatures that can’t survive further up the shore. Peer under rocks and in damp nooks and you might see cushion stars (Asterina gibbosa), chubby little cousins of the bigger, leggier starfish that live further offshore. Powder pink and orange-coloured cushion stars are often fingernail size but they can grow up to 5cm across. They’re common all along the British coast (though you’re unlikely to spot one in the east between Lincolnshire and Hampshire).

Also, on the underside of rocks at low tide, look out for what look like constellations of tiny golden stars. These are star ascidians (Botryllus schloserri), colonies of little animals known as sea squirts. Between three and 12 individuals make a single star-shaped pattern. Sea squirts start life as minute larvae that swim through the water. When they find a rock to settle onto, they digest their simple brain and nerve cord and spend the rest of their lives sitting still filtering water through their bodies.

Once you’ve finished looking, always carefully put the rocks back the way you found them.

Cuttlefish and catsharks

High up on the shore, beyond the reach of the water, you will find traces of animal life the sea has left behind. Bone white objects like miniature styrofoam surfboards are the internal shells of common cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis), relatives of squid and octopuses. Cuttlefish live all around the British Isles as deep as 200 metres, and large numbers gather along England’s south coast.

You might encounter living cuttlefish underwater while diving and snorkelling. Look for them in seaweed gardens and around rocky reefs. They can grow as long as your arm and have a skirt-like fin that flutters all the way around their oval body. Their big eyes have W-shaped pupils. Their skin can swiftly change colour and texture; one minute they’re brown and bumpy matching the seabed, the next they’re smooth and pale with black zebra stripes.

One way to distinguish cuttlefish from octopuses is to count their appendages: octopuses have eight arms with suckers all the way along, meanwhile cuttlefish have eight arms plus two tentacles that shoot out and grab prey with suckers just at the end.

Other strandline objects to spot are the leathery egg cases, also known as mermaid’s purses, laid by sharks and skates. Small-spotted catsharks (Scyliorhinus canicula) lay small egg cases, 5-7cm long, with curly tendrils in each corner that help fix them to seaweed on the seabed. After six to nine months, a miniature, fully formed cat shark wriggles out and swims off. Divers have a good chance of encountering adult catsharks resting on the seabed. Their slender, brown-speckled bodies grow to about a metre long, and they have oval-shaped eyes, like a cat.

Jewel-like shells

While snorkeling or exploring the shore at very low tides, look for little jewel-like shells, with shining turquoise stripes, sitting on the rubbery blades of kelp. Blue-rayed limpets (Patella pellucida) are seaweed-eating sea snails and they graze little dimples in the kelp to create space to nestle in.

Their glowing stripes selectively reflect blue wavelengths of sunlight, thanks to the intricate nanostructure of the shell’s interior. Material scientists are looking into recreating this effect to make transparent display screens. Blue-rayed limpets don’t live along much of the east coast of England, but you can find them all around the west and northern coasts of Great Britain and Ireland.

Atlantic puffin

There’s no mistaking a puffin, with its black and white body, rainbow-coloured, parrot-like beak and stubby wings which it uses both to fly and swim while hunting for fish, using its feet as a rudder. It can dive to 40m, hold its breath for a minute and cram dozens of sandeels in its beak at a time.

Puffins spend the wintertime far out at sea. Then, in spring and summer, around four million pairs fly to the UK to breed. Look out for puffins dashing in and out of their burrows on cliffs around Scotland, northern and south-west England and Wales.

10%

Skomer Island off the Pembrokeshire coast is one of the best places to see puffins, with more than 40,000 counted each year. The seas around Skomer are well protected from overfishing and the island is free of predators, so puffins get plenty of food and seclusion to rear their chicks. Elsewhere, the seabirds are suffering because the climate crisis and overfishing are making it difficult for them to find enough food.