Many senior Democrats — including some of President Biden's aides — doubt his theory for victory, which relies on voter fears about Jan. 6, political violence, democracy and Donald Trump's character, Alex Thompson writes.

• A Democratic strategist in touch with the campaign tells Axios: "It is unclear to many of us watching from the outside whether the president and his core team realize how dire the situation is right now, and whether they even have a plan to fix it. That is scary."

Why it matters: People close to Biden tell Axios they worry about raising concerns in meetings, because his longtime loyalists can exile dissenters.

Biden's inner circle has full faith in the strategy developed by the president and his longtime aide, Mike Donilon.

• That puts them on an island. Polls show Biden tied or behind, even after a slight bump after Trump's criminal conviction.
• Biden's former chief of staff Ron Klain, who has known Donilon for decades, told Axios the inner circle's view boils down to: "In Mike I trust."

👂 What we're hearing: Donilon, Biden's top political aide, privately has reassured people that voters will "do the right thing" in November by embracing democracy and rejecting Trump.

• "Joe Biden is a great president, and great presidents get re-elected," is another common Donilon refrain.
• Donilon — one of the most experienced and understated Democratic operatives in the country — has worked with Biden since 1981. Donilon argues that polls aren't fully reflecting voters' concerns about democracy.

🔭 Zoom out: Many Democrats think the president and his closest aides learned the wrong lessons from Democratic wins in 2020 and 2022 — causing them to misread 2024.

• Biden's core team, including Donilon, believes Biden won in 2020 because his "soul of the nation" message resonated and he presented a clear "moral contrast" to Trump.

🥊 Reality check: The angst among many Democrats is about the larger narrative Biden's team is telling rather than its tactics.

• Democrats close to the campaign told Axios that morale and management have largely improved since Jen O'Malley Dillon left the White House and joined the campaign earlier this year.

Share this story.

Irate Biden aides canceled a high-level U.S.-Israel meeting on Iran after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video, in English, complaining the U.S. is withholding military aid, Barak Ravid reports.

• Why it matters: President Biden's top advisers were enraged by the video — a message U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein delivered personally to Netanyahu in a meeting hours after it was published.

🖼️ The big picture: Relations between Biden and Netanyahu's teams are more strained now than at any point in the eight months since the war in Gaza began on Oct. 7.

• "This decision makes it clear that there are consequences for pulling such stunts," a U.S. official said.
• "The Americans are fuming. Bibi's video [did] a lot of damage," a senior Israeli official said.

🔎 Zoom in: Netanyahu declared in the video that it was "inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel."

• Biden's team was angry and shocked by Netanyahu's ingratitude.

Watch the 50-second video ... Share this story.

On Thursday, Apple was the most valuable company in the world. On Monday, it was Microsoft.

• Yesterday, for the first time ever, it was Nvidia.

Why it matters: Nvidia is a relative newcomer to the world of megacaps. It only broke through the $1 trillion barrier in mid-2023, Axios' Felix Salmon writes.

• Now it has eclipsed all of its competitors, thanks to broad excitement about AI — which is overwhelmingly powered by Nvidia's chips.

Share this story.

Willie Mays — the electrifying center fielder whose powerful bat and defensive skill made him the best all-around baseball player ever — died yesterday at 93.

• Why he mattered: Mays, nicknamed the "Say Hey Kid," transcended baseball. His charismatic playing style and big personality made him one of the most beloved figures of his time.

Mays, who played most of his career with the Giants, matched his astonishing athleticism with a desire to entertain.

• He wore a too-small hat so it would fly off when he ran. His trademark was the basket catch, nabbing fly balls at his waist instead of over his head.
• His over-the-head catch on a towering drive that would've been a home run in most parks during the 1954 World Series is considered one of the greatest plays in baseball history. In baseball lore, it's simply "The Catch."

Between the lines: Many experts believe Mays could have broken Babe Ruth's all-time home run record, as Hank Aaron later did, had he not had to serve in the military in 1952 and 1953, Axios' Russell Contreras writes.

• Mays ended his career with 660 home runs, shy Ruth's then-record 714.

Mays was the oldest living Hall of Famer and one of the last surviving people who played in the Negro Leagues.

• Go deeper: Tribute quotes ... Share this story.

Two bold-face political names won primaries yesterday:

• In Northern Virginia's closely watched U.S. House District 7, voters chose Eugene Vindman — familiar to voters for his role in Trump's first impeachment — in a crowded Democratic primary to try to succeed Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D), who's running for governor in 2025. Go deeper.
• In Georgia, former Trump aide Brian Jack won the GOP nomination in the deep-red 3rd Congressional District, in the southwest Atlanta suburbs. He'll try to drive up turnout for Trump in the swing state. Go deeper.

🧗Cliffhanger alert ... Yesterday's hottest race is too close to call:

With 95% of the vote in, Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) was losing to Trump-endorsed state Sen. John McGuire by 327 votes, or 0.52 points, out of 62,495 ballots counted, in Virginia's 5th Congressional District (Lynchburg).

• Why it matters: Good, who chairs the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, is one of America's most conservative congressmen. But Good incurred Trump's wrath by endorsing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the presidential primaries. Trump bashed Good and campaigned for McGuire.

Get the latest.

The U.S. national debt is projected to balloon to $50 trillion in a decade, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates released yesterday.

• Why it matters: The U.S. budget outlook is bleak — and neither party has any political appetite to reduce the deficit.

Debt held by the public will increase from 99% of GDP this year to 122% in 2034 — the highest on record, Axios Macro co-author Courtenay Brown writes.

• Next year, the federal government's interest costs are expected to be a greater share of GDP than at any point since the CBO began reporting data in 1940.

Go deeper: Immigration surge projected to boost growth, CBO says.

President Biden's new immigration policies are facing litigation from both sides of the policy spectrum — the ACLU and Stephen Miller's America First Legal, Axios' Stef W. Kight writes.

• Why it matters: On border policy, rapid political and legal blowback has become a given.

Biden announced a sweeping new program yesterday that would make getting green cards easier for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who have been in the U.S. for years and are legally married to or the children of citizens.

• Trump-allied America First Legal pledged legal action. Miller — a longtime Trump adviser, and the group's president — decried the move as "one of the largest executive amnesties in American history."
• Immigrant rights groups and Democratic lawmakers cheered the move.

The other side: Exactly two weeks earlier, Biden sparked furious legal pushback from the left by announcing drastic asylum restrictions.

• The ACLU has already sued.

Share this story.

159 years ago today, Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger delivered General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas, which declares:

• "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free."

The order came two months after the Civil War ended (and President Lincoln was shot) — and two years after President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.

• Go deeper.