Skip Jill Biden’s Book and Read Hunter Biden’s Social-Media Posts Instead

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.For some time, the Biden family standings were clear. Hunter, the ne’er-do-well son, resided in the basement. Joe, occasionally buffoonish but a successful and durable politician, sat in the middle. Jill, the community-college professor with a bright smile, was widely liked—even if some conservatives scoffed at her wanting to be addressed as “doctor.” (Everyone agreed that Beau, the saintly oldest son who died of cancer at 46, had been the best of the bunch.)The Biden family is at its highest peak of attention since Joe left office in January 2025. Jill is on tour for her memoir View From the East Wing; Joe spoke Friday night at a Best Western in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Hunter is on X, Substack, and a podcast. Something strange has happened in the midst of this: As each of them has tried to publicly reconcile themselves with troubled recent history, Hunter has been oddly charming, while Jill has turned heel.The former president, for his part, is simply no longer relevant. In his address to the South Dakota Democratic Party’s annual McGovern Day dinner, Joe Biden ripped into his predecessor cum successor. “My God,” he said, “tearing down the East Room of the White House to make room for a ballroom more fitting of Versailles?” The issue is not that he’s wrong about Donald Trump, nor that he was in 2024. It’s that few people are interested in hearing him, assuming they can. (The New York Times reported that Biden was “at times halting and hard to understand, at other times yelling clearly at the top of his voice.”)Jill’s handling of Joe’s visible aging also explains why she’s lost some of her luster. As the then-president struggled through his term, the first lady was his dogged defender. She was viewed as pivotal in his decision to run for a second term and bitterly o