🎰 Gavin Newsom is gambling that embracing Joe Biden will be more popular among Democrats than running away from him in the party's 2028 presidential primary.

🤗 Why it matters: The California governor — unlike most potential Democratic candidates for president — has spent the last 18 months courting Biden and his family, publicly defending the ex-president's legacy as others have distanced themselves.

• 🗳️ A Biden endorsement could be consequential. Many Democratic primary voters — especially Black and Latino voters — still have much affection for him, despite his unpopularity with the broader electorate.

Driving the news: Newsom has been an unapologetic defender of Biden's legacy and his family, citing his ability to pass big legislation with bipartisan support as well as his character — particularly in contrast to what Newsom calls Donald Trump's "childishness."

• "I'll never turn my back on Joe Biden," Newsom told a South Carolina crowd earlier this year.
• "One of the most successful presidents in the last century," Newsom told ABC News last fall in describing Biden, even as he acknowledged having differences with Biden's immigration policy, a liability for Democrats in 2024.
• Overall, the Biden administration was a "masterclass of policymaking," he told Axios in March.
• "I'm blessed to have gotten to know him, to defend him and defend his character, and continue to defend his record," he added.

🎙️ Last week, Newsom hosted Hunter Biden on his podcast. The former president's son repeatedly alluded to Newsom becoming the next president.

• Paraphrasing one of his father's old lines, Hunter told Newsom: "I'll come campaign for you or against you, whatever helps most."

The intrigue: Joe Biden and his team currently feel much more warmly toward Newsom than most other potential 2028 candidates — including Biden's vice president, Kamala Harris.

• 🫵 Harris sharply criticized Biden and former first lady Jill Biden in her book "107 Days" last year, writing that him running for reelection at age 81 was "recklessness."
• 📺 When read that excerpt during her own recent book tour, Jill Biden curtly told NBC's "Today" show: "That is her point of view and if she felt that way, she should have said it."
• Spokespeople for Biden and Newsom did not comment.

The other side: Harris has plenty of company among potential White House contenders in criticizing Biden's tenure and his decision to run again.

• "I want us to admit that the Biden administration made some pretty big mistakes," Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) recently told Semafor's Dave Weigel.
• Earlier this year on the "Raging Moderates" podcast, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro blasted how the Biden administration implemented — or didn't implement — some policies.
• 🛜 "The Biden-Harris administration didn't provide those specific tangible things that people could see or feel. ... Do you know how many people ... this many years later, have been connected to high-speed affordable internet thanks to President Biden's law in Pennsylvania? Zero. Because the dollars were never driven out."

There are some risks for Newsom in aligning with Biden, beyond the criticisms of Biden's administration.

• Newsom was one of the fiercest defenders of Biden's fitness for office after the disastrous June 2024 debate against Trump in which the president was unable to express complete thoughts.
• Last November on NBC's "Meet the Press," Newsom claimed he hadn't seen Biden act the way he did on the debate stage with "one exception" — at a fundraiser in Southern California. "All of us were a little taken aback," Newsom said.
• He added that he attributed that episode to Biden's intense travel schedule and jet lag.
• Asked by Axios in March whether he thought Biden could be president right now if he'd been reelected, Newsom didn't directly answer but said that "the health issues have obviously accelerated," pointing to Biden's cancer diagnosis.

Read more.

— Alex Thompson

A look at what potential 2028 Democratic presidential contenders are up to:

• 🇺🇸 Potential 2028 candidates descended on Chicago for the opening of the Obama Presidential Center and to grip-and-grin with Democratic power brokers. Newsom, Shapiro, Harris, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, California Rep. Ro Khanna, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Obama's former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel were all on hand for the festivities and to praise the former president.
• Khanna went on "Real Time With Bill Maher" and defended the large Obama center, rejecting the notion that it's a monument to the former president's ego.
• 🚛 New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker delivered a rousing speech to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters convention in Las Vegas, where he said: "I don't care if you're a Republican or Democrat. Do you support the [Faster Labor Contracts Act]? ... This is not about party, it's about people." The House-passed bill seeks to expedite labor negotiations. The Teamsters — which shocked many Democrats by declining to endorse a candidate in 2024 — have been drifting right in recent years.
• 💥 Harris attended the Schwarzenegger Climate Initiative's summit in Austria, where she blasted Trump for his war on Iran. "This is a war the American people did not want. This is a war of choice. This is a president who has proven himself to be entirely self-indulgent."
• Newsom and his team are bracing for a sprawling investigation by Trump's Justice Department and preempted it with a statement Monday: "Donald Trump isn't just coming after me because of my mean tweets. ... He's coming after me because I am considering running for president."
• Kelly opened up about his father's alcoholism and physical abuse in a raw interview with CNN's Jake Tapper.
• Buttigieg traveled to Little Rock, Ark., to campaign for congressional candidate Chris Jones.
• 📚 Emanuel, who has called for changes in U.S. higher education, appeared on the education-focused Substack show "The Grade."
• 🏀 New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talked Knicks basketball with the New York Post, her nemesis hometown paper.
• 📈 Shapiro is cruising to reelection as Pennsylvania's governor, per new polls.

🏫 When Shapiro ran for student body president at the University of Rochester in 1992, he poured it on thick.

• ⚾️ In his platform, published by the university's newspaper at the time, he promised to fight faculty cuts, touted his creation of a Club Sports Council and boasted that he already was working with student government leaders to fix problems.

🌕 Then he shot for the moon.

• "Robert Kennedy said, 'Some men see things as they are and say, Why? I dream things that never were and say, Why not?'" Shapiro said, quoting the current Health and Human Services secretary's late father.
• "Following that idea, I will critically assess the current situation in all areas of the university, retaining and building upon that which is successful, but also constantly challenging all of us to dare to dream dreams and drive ourselves to obtain an even stronger, sounder, more superior University of Rochester."

🏆 His big ambition paid off: Running against five juniors, Shapiro won — becoming the only first-year student in the university's history to win the job.

 — Holly Otterbein