Michelle Obama has privately expressed frustration over the Biden family largely exiling her close friend Kathleen Buhle after Buhle's messy divorce from Hunter Biden, Axios' Alex Thompson reports.

• Why it matters: The family tensions — and the former first lady's disdain for partisan politics — help explain why one of the most popular Democratic voices hasn't campaigned for President Biden's re-election, the sources said, even as former President Obama has been a willing surrogate.

The former first lady was initially reluctant to campaign for Biden after he became the Democratic nominee in 2020, people familiar with the situation told us.

• Despite public displays of camaraderie that continue today, the relationship between the Bidens and Obamas changed in 2015.
• Then-Vice President Biden was weighing a presidential run, and President Obama discouraged it.
• That was also the year Biden's son Beau died of cancer, setting off years of tumult within the family, including Hunter Biden and Buhle's divorce in 2017.

This year, Barack Obama has attended fundraisers and appeared in videos for President Biden's re-election effort. But the former president has done so solo, without his popular spouse.

• The former president regularly praises and boosts Biden in posts on X. But Michelle Obama hasn't posted about Biden's re-election campaign since he got in the race. (She re-posted his announcement.)

The intrigue: In the fall of 2017, Barack Obama — without Michelle — attended a fundraiser in Wilmington, Del., for the Beau Biden Foundation, a children's advocacy group.

• The fundraiser featured much of the Biden family at a time when Hunter Biden, who was recently divorced from Buhle, was dating Beau's widow, Hallie Biden.
• After the event, the former president privately described the Biden family dynamics there as "weird sh*t," a person familiar with his remarks told Axios.

Michelle Obama, who had become friends with Buhle during the Obama administration, privately told others that she felt Buhle had been wronged.

• Buhle had to deal with Hunter's drug use and infidelity — and then Biden family members blamed Buhle for some of the salacious details of his behavior becoming public.

This week, Jill Biden attended the memorial service for Michelle's mother, Marian Robinson, a source familiar with her travel told Axios.

• Michelle Obama's absence from the campaign trail to this point in 2024 isn't just about her relationship with Buhle — it also reflects her longstanding distaste for partisan politics.
• But she spoke to the virtual Democratic convention in 2020, and helped the campaign after Democrats privately argued to her that the stakes were too high for her to sit out.

What we're watching: The former first lady could hit the campaign trail this year.

• Top White House aide Anita Dunn and top Michelle Obama aide Melissa Winter recently had lunch and talked about specific ways the Biden campaign could involve the former first lady.

Crystal Carson, a spokesperson for Michelle Obama, said in a statement that the former first lady supports Biden's re-election and that "she is friends with Kathleen and with the Bidens. Two things can be true."

• White House spokesman Andrew Bates told Axios: "The Biden and Obama families are like family to one other, and whoever made these claims about that relationship isn't familiar with it."

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Editor's note: This item has been corrected to say that Jill Biden attended the memorial service for Michelle Obama's mother (but did not fly there with her).

The Biden campaign is using tonight's CNN debate (9 p.m. ET) to launch a new offensive against Trump allies' transformational second-term plans, known as Project 2025, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

• Why it matters: The Biden campaign wants to convince jaded voters that a second Trump presidency poses grave risks to the country.

The transition agenda was published by the Heritage Foundation with input from close Trump allies and former aides — some of whom are likely to take top jobs if he wins.

• The Project 2025 proposals — which isn't an official campaign platform — have started to attract more attention online as more Americans tune into the race. (The Trump campaign has its own Agenda47.)
• Google search interest in "Project 2025" surged earlier this month. A John Oliver segment on Trump's plans for a second term racked up nearly 5 million views on YouTube in under a week.

The Biden campaign is trying to capitalize on the viral momentum with a new website and a series of digital and physical ads across Atlanta, the site of the debate.

• It's also seeking to leverage influencers on TikTok.

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Republicans are more invested in watching the face-off between President Biden and former President Trump than Democrats or independents, Axios' Margaret Talev writes from Syracuse University/Ipsos polling.

• 75% of Republicans in the survey said they're likely to watch a televised debate between the rivals, compared with about 60% of Democrats and 58% of independents.

Why it matters: Trump and his team have sought to temper expectations and conservative media narratives that he'll outperform Biden. Tonight, these will be put to the test.

• Many Americans "really believe this narrative that Biden's this senile old man who's secretly or not-so-secretly controlled" by Vice President Harris and Trump's "going to clean the floor with him," said Ipsos pollster Chris Jackson.

Keep reading.

This is the stage for tonight's 90-minute debate in Atlanta.

• It'll be the first presidential debate to be held in a studio — with no live audience — since Kennedy-Nixon in 1960.

How to watch.

The debate is being held at Turner's Techwood Campus in Midtown Atlanta.

• CNN is using Studio D, normally home of the baseball show "MLB on TBS," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Rodney Ho reports.

🎤 Video: CNN's Phil Mattingly and Victor Blackwell tour the set, and show how the control room will "mute the mike" when the other candidate is talking.

Cyberattacks on software widely used by dealerships are throttling auto sales, Axios' Nathan Bomey writes.

• Why it matters: Some 15,000 dealerships were rendered helpless this month when hackers attacked CDK Global software that the dealerships rely on to sell cars and manage inventory.

Between the lines: U.S. auto sales are expected to fall anywhere from 2.6% to 7.2% in June compared with a year earlier, J.D. Power projected today.

• The attacks could cost dealers up to 140,000 vehicle sales in June,

🔮 What's next: CDK told dealers that the outage could last past June 30.

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America's schools, businesses and cities are failing to help younger workers and underrepresented communities prepare for and land well-paid jobs, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told Axios' Hope King.

• Why it matters: Dimon has called out colleges for not focusing enough on getting their graduates good jobs.

📈 Driving the news: The 30 companies involved in New York Jobs CEO Council — a nonprofit Dimon started — hired more than 10,000 low-income New Yorkers into jobs paying more than $69,000 last year, according to an annual report released this morning.

• About 41% of the hires didn't have a four-year degree.

Between the lines: Dimon said it has "nothing to do with DEI" and that he's "not interested in labels."

• "This has to do with the system [not]working and [needing] to be fixed," he said. "If we leave behind whole parts of society, we're making a huge mistake for our country."

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The annual summer surge of COVID infections has begun, Axios' Tina Reed writes.

• Why it matters: People congregating indoors to avoid extreme heat and a potentially record-setting July 4 travel period are expected to drive up infections.

🧮 By the numbers: Cases are growing or likely growing in 39 states, and they don't appear to be declining in any state, according to the latest CDC data.

• Hospitalizations and deaths remain low.
• Wastewater surveillance, one of the more reliable ways to track COVID since testing dropped off, shows COVID levels rising in the Midwest, Northeast and South.

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Hall of Fame Olympics host Al Michaels, 79, will return as an AI voice for the Summer Games in Paris:

• Generative AI and AI voice synthesis technology will offer online fans a personalized compilation of feature clips, "Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock."

The bot "was trained using his past appearances on NBC and matches his signature expertise and elocution," NBCUniversal announced yesterday.

• "When I was approached about this, I was skeptical but obviously curious," Michaels said. "Then I saw a demonstration detailing what they had in mind. I said, 'I'm in.'"

Michaels told Vanity Fair the result was "astonishing .... amazing."

• "And it was a little bit frightening," he added. "It was not only close, it was almost 2% off perfect."

🏒 Michaels made the iconic call in 1980 when the U.S. men's hockey team upset the USSR in Lake Placid, N.Y.: "Do you believe in miracles? Yes!"

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