• Francis Ford Coppola opened a filmmaker-focused hotel in Peachtree City, Georgia.
• The hotel, part of The Family Coppola Hideaways, features 27 rooms and post-production facilities.
• Coppola was inspired to create the hotel during the production of his new film, "Megalopolis."

A film-production site and hotel in one, Francis Ford Coppola's new All-Movie Hotel is a filmmaker's haven and a cinephile's dream.

Located in Georgia, the hotel — which we spotted via Gizmodo — is the newest addition to The Family Coppola Hideaways, a collection of resorts in Belize, Guatemala, Argentina, and Italy.

With state-of-the-art post-production facilities and 27 rooms personally designed by Coppola, the hotel caters specifically "to the needs of filmmakers," the website says.

Coppola said he was inspired to build the hotel in Peachtree City, located around 30 miles from Atlanta, after spending two years in the area shooting his latest project, "Megalopolis."

"When I didn't want to think about the movie, I would think about this hotel," he said. "And when I didn't want to think about the hotel, I would think about the movie."

Georgia's film industry generated an estimated $4.1 billion in production expenditure in 2023 and contains multiple production facilities, including those responsible for many of Disney's Marvel movies.

However, Coppola said the lack of spaces specifically for post-production inspired him to create a facility with an "intimate connection" between luxury accommodations and post-filming studios like editing suites and sound studios.

The director vouched for the facility's quality, revealing that "Megalopolis" will say "sound mixed at the All-Movie Hotel," which he thinks will make filmmakers "come here in droves."

Take a look inside.

The hotel's Dorothy Theater can be used for reviewing new sound recordings, watching live edits, and hosting larger ADR sessions.

The screening room features a 7.4' diagonal screen, a 9.1.6 Atmos Meyer speaker set-up, and a SIM 2 Gold Nero 4s projector, according to the website. It also has two Avid S6 Consoles and a Mac Pro computer for editing in the theater itself.

The theater, named after famed film director Dorothy Arzner, can also be transformed to accommodate up to 30 guests.

During downtime, casts and crews — and regular guests — can set up the Dorothy Theater with multiple couches and tables for a cozy movie night.

The eponymous Arzner was one of few female directors in Hollywood during the 1930s, with a successful career spanning from the silent era to sound film. She was also one of Coppola's teachers at UCLA.

An editorial wing is connected to the Dorothy Theater, which contains a fully soundproof ADR suite and two editorial suites.

Each editorial room has multiple Small HD reference monitors and can be customized to your preferred editorial setup. Speakers, TVs, and a slew of other equipment are available for any editing needs.

The first floor features two more editorial suites for reviewing footage, picture and sound editing, and other production editorial needs.

Each room offers a projector, Meyer speakers, and a Mac Pro computer, according to the website. The hotel also has an IT room with a local QNAP server and can provide an engineer for further support for an added cost.

A "Green Room" offers a large kitchen, dining area, and a lending library of books.

Actors and crew can hang out in this bright communal space to cook or enjoy meals prepared by a private chef. The kitchen is fully stocked with two large refrigerators, a six-burner stove, an espresso machine, and various food staples.

Guests can book the Francis Ford Coppola Suite, where the director personally stayed during his two-year residency at the hotel.

The room, one of two extensive "star suites" located on the second floor, is furnished with pieces from Restoration Hardware, including a queen-sized bed, a sofa, and two velvet director chairs. The suite also includes a screen projector, luxury bathroom, dining table, and a full kitchenette with a bar, sink, refrigerator, two-burner stovetop, microwave, and dishwasher.

Guests can also choose to stay in a suite or room that connects to a separate bunkbed room, which can accommodate up to four guests.

Especially ideal for families with children, these rooms can either feature four twin-sized bunk beds or a lower double bed with a trundle and a twin bed on top.

Coppola also designed a suite to celebrate Japanese filmmaking history.

The Japanese suite includes two queen-sized beds, with each bedroom divided by shoji screens for privacy. It also offers a kitchenette and seating area.

The living room offers boardgames and features 'The Godfather' pinball machines.

The living room, where guests can gather or relax on the couch, is also where daily continental-style breakfast is served.

The hotel also offers a patio, a small gym, and a large swimming pool with an outdoor grill

For further outdoor recreation, guests can rent a golf cart or reserve one of the hotel's complimentary bikes to explore over 100 miles of golf cart paths.

The All-Movie Hotel is set to open on July 25th, Variety reported.

• Jimmy and Brooke Sweeney decided to leave Fort Worth, Texas, with their 4-year-old daughter, Isla.
• They've been traveling the world to find a home that fits their lifestyle since June 2023.
• They have visited 29 countries so far and spend an average of less than $200 a day.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jimmy Sweeney, a 31-year-old dad who has been traveling the world with his wife, Brooke, and 4-year-old daughter, Isla, to find a new home since June 2023. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

Brooke and I have always loved traveling, and having a kid, we knew we didn't want to change that. We went to Australia and New Zealand a week after we found out Brooke was pregnant.

We lived in Fort Worth, Texas, and there was a lot we loved about it. It's a larger city but still has a small-town feel. We loved our neighborhood. We had some great friends. But ultimately, we realized that long-term, it wasn't where we felt we fit.

I've been to over 40 states, and while there are places we love, they all fall under this cultural umbrella that we feel like we are battling against often. Because of that and knowing that we didn't want to send our kid to school in Texas, given the state of education and the attacks that have been happening on public schooling in the state, we started to look around.

Given our stage of life, we were like, "Why not take the time and go see the world and try to see if there's somewhere that we just fall in love with?"

We sold our house and started our journey in Europe

We put our house on the market in April of last year. It took seven months to sell.

We should have closed a week before we left, but as housing contracts do, it fell through. We had to carry that along with us as we traveled, but it worked out.

A big thing was getting a storage unit and selling our stuff. We did a month straight of garage sales.

When we left Texas, we went to my parents' house in Florida for about a month. While we were there, we decided we would start in Europe.

We've been to 29 countries so far.

We're looking for a place that invests in public spaces, that creates a communal culture around people feeling like they can be out and about. Having public transit, being walkable, and having schools that align with the schooling we want our child to have are also important.

We want to settle somewhere by the time our kid needs to start school. Long-term, we want our kid to feel stable and have a place where they can make friends.

We have tried to match what we spent in the US

I'm a stay-at-home dad. Brooke still works for the same company she did in the US.

When we were in the States, she worked hybrid remote, and when she told them she was going to leave, they asked her to move into a role that was more like project management. She has adapted to that, allowing her to work remotely full-time.

We were just going to travel and have the money from selling our house, but it's been nice for her to be working, obviously financially, because then we get to save more. But at the same time, it also gives a little more structure to our days.

We have tried to match what we spent in the US, but in different ways because we don't have a mortgage, energy bills, or a car payment.

I've tried to stay under $100 a night for lodging. In 29 countries so far and 60-ish cities, there have maybe been five or six where I've had to do a lot of digging to get to that. As a family, we don't have the option to stay in the hostels like many other long-term travelers.

For the most part, we pay between $50 and $75 a night for lodging, which typically gets us a space with a washer, dryer, and a small kitchen. For food and experiences, we also try to stay under $100 a day.

It's different traveling long-term than being on vacation. We're not doing excursions every day, drinking alcohol with every meal, or going out to a bar every night. We are looking for parks, libraries, and free museums.

We don't spend as much on experiences as you would if you were just coming to a place for a week or two. It depends on how long we stay in one place, which can be days or weeks. We spent multiple weeks in New Zealand, Australia, and Japan.

Grocery shopping is a great way to learn about the seasonality of ingredients in a place and to see and learn about the rhythms of many people. Are you running out to the grocery to grab stuff every day just for dinner that night, or is it more like an American-style thing where you're bulk shopping for a week at a time? And you get to know the prices that way as well.

We also love to go to bookstores and libraries. Seeing the stories kids in a place are growing up with is a great way to learn about a culture. That's engaging for our kid, and she loves that, but it's also great for us to see what parents do with their kids throughout the week.

We've loved a lot of places so far

It doesn't take long to understand whether you relate to or feel a part of somewhere. There are places that you can easily cross off a list.

We love Kuala Lumpur, but you walk outside for five minutes and your entire body is dripping sweat. We have done that for enough of our lives that we're like, "Rainy season in Southeast Asia is not what we're going to insert ourselves into."

A lot of it comes with figuring out if moving there is a possibility.

Several places have opened up digital nomad visas. We enjoyed Spain a lot, and they have a digital nomad visa. But you're conflicted about the impact of moving somewhere and seeing a place that has felt the impact of the number of people immigrating there and protecting the local population.

In places like Denmark, Australia, and New Zealand, the entry point is getting a job, and that's not necessarily easy or hard. It's just a thing.

Language is also a big consideration. Even if many places conduct business in English, if we're moving to a non-English-speaking country, there's a gap in making friends in the workplace or elsewhere. Some languages are harder to learn than others.

We love that we get to bring our kid alongside us

One thing that we especially try to show with sharing our travels is that it is much more approachable with kids than you might think, especially with food.

Every kid in the world enjoys chicken tenders and french fries. You'll be able to find that somewhere or some derivative of it that looks similar. Whether the rice looks slightly different or it's a different seasoning on the chicken, those things become a gateway to her trying new foods.

When you're traveling in general, you see how much more similar we are in our day-to-day routines than you might have the perception of.

Kids are growing up everywhere. People have to learn and adapt to what to do with their kids, and it's not that different from what we do in the US.

We love that we get to bring our kid alongside us in this and experience it with her.

Travel should change us

Next year, we'll look toward continuing to travel some and being in the job application phase.

Or if digital nomad is what we need to do for a little while, doing that.

Ultimately, it's about embracing a culture, learning its history, and becoming part of it. That's my biggest hope for us at the end of this.

Traveling and experiencing new cultures should change us. It should have a lasting effect on how we conduct ourselves and live our lives.

In many ways, that's what led us on this journey. And maybe that journey for you isn't moving out of the city, out of state, or out of the country. Maybe it just means small things you incorporate into your day-to-day that help you live a more fulfilling routine.

• Walmart is America's grocery king, selling more food than the next two largest companies combined.
• The retailer is leaning heavily into AI to get perishable foods to store shelves even faster.
• Take a look inside one of Walmart's state-of-the-art distribution centers for perishable goods.

Walmart is the biggest grocery store in the US, with more shoppers getting their groceries there than from any other retailer.

To keep the shelves of its 4,600 US stores well-stocked, the retailer relies on a vast network of 42 regional distribution centers that receive and sort pallets of merchandise.

On Wednesday, Walmart pulled back the curtain on one of its state-of-the-art AI-powered refrigerated warehouses designed to handle perishable goods like meat, dairy, and produce.

The company says it has completed two all-new builds, with three more on the way, while five existing perishable distribution centers are being upgraded with the tech.

Take a look to see how it works:

Trucks arrive with pallets that have of one type of merchandise

Arriving goods are inspected by human workers.

Forklift operators put arriving pallets into a machine that separates the boxes

Walmart says automation is allowing workers to transition into higher-skilled roles.

The machine raises the pallet and scans the contents…

"We know what we own, in what quantity and where it is, all in near real time," Dave Guggina, executive vice president of Walmart's supply chain, told CNBC. "And we know that at a level of proficiency that is significantly improved than what we've been able to achieve with manual processes or legacy software."

… and send cases down a conveyer belt to be stored

The automation and tracking allow Walmart to better anticipate customer demand and keep the right amount of inventory on hand, the company says.

What makes this facility special is that everything must be refrigerated – like this cream cheese

Walmart previously revealed its automation technology at what are called "ambient" distribution centers.

The shelves reach as high as 80 feet and are accessed entirely by robots

Walmart says the additional vertical space is allowing the company to expand its fulfillment services for third-party sellers — not unlike Amazon.

Warehouse employees keep an eye on the flow of merchandise

This automated warehouse still requires about 500 workers, with starting pay at $20 to $34 per hour.

As stores report inventory requirements, an AI algorithm determines the most effective way to pack the mix of products they need onto a new pallet

The system also puts more fragile items, like eggs and fruit, toward the top of the stack.

Walmart says the model tries to ensure that pallets are loaded in a way that simplifies the restocking process for store employees

The system knows exactly which aisle in a particular store that a group of cases is headed to.

Robots then pull the items from throughout the warehouse

"You take a distribution center today, one of our associates is walking up to 10 miles a day, lifting thousands of pounds, moving pallets and things like that," Walmart CFO John David Rainey said of the traditional, non-automated system.

Selected merchandise flows to a loading area…

New construction is slated for Wellford, South Carolina; Belvidere, Illinois; and Pilesgrove, New Jersey.

… and is loaded onto a pallet according to the plan, before it is wrapped for shipping

Guggina told CNBC some pallets can be stacked exclusively with items for fulfilling e-commerce orders, rather than being put on shelves.

It's a complex system that still requires human oversight

Of Walmart's 42 distribution centers, CFO John David Rainey said the company has 15 with "some level of automation."

Finished pallets are then loaded onto a truck and sent to a store

The 15 automated distribution centers serve about 1,700 stores.

At the store, workers unload the trucks and restock the shelves

If everything goes according to plan, restocking the shelves moves more quickly.

Walmart says its automated warehouses can process twice as much merchandise as traditional ones

"When we automate one of these DCs, we see roughly twice the throughput with half the head count," CFO John David Rainey said. "And so the math on this is very, very compelling."

• Rising snack prices might have finally peaked, PepsiCo's CEO said Thursday.
• Even high-income customers are feeling the impact from years of food inflation, Ramon Laguarta said.
• It's the latest sign that you could see some relief from high prices at the grocery store.

Snack costs might have finally hit a turning point after years of price increases, the parent company of Doritos and Cheetos said Thursday.

"Do you believe that the prices at Frito are too high given the increases over recent years?" Kaumil Gajrawala, an analyst with Jefferies, asked PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta during a question-and-answer session after earnings on Thursday. Frito-Lay is a division that sells packaged foods like Cheeto's and Lays potato chips.

Laguarta responded that some products might need new price points to get consumers buying them again.

"Yes, there is some value to be given back to consumers after three or four years of a lot of inflation," he said.

One major reason: Sales volumes for many of PepsiCo's food and snack products within its Frito-Lay and Quaker Foods North America business have fallen during its last few fiscal quarters.

As food inflation rose over the last few years, companies like PepsiCo have been able to push through price increases to retailers and consumers — and then some. Last year, for example, the company's revenue rose 9% on an organic basis. The volume of "convenient foods" sold fell 2%.

But those days might finally be over, PepsiCo's top executive's comments indicated.

That'll be a relief for consumers battling overall inflation. Indeed, when Instacart user Crisman White tried to reorder a batch of groceries from five years ago, two of the biggest price jumps were from a 12-pack of Pepsi and a bag of pedigree dog food.

And it's not just customers on a budget who are feeling the pinch of high prices, Laguarta said later in the call. Even high-income consumers are looking to save money on food.

"This need for value or more value consciousness, I think, is impacting every household in the US," he added.

Food inflation has increased at a steady pace over the last few months. The food index of the Consumer Prices Index rose 2.2% year-on-year in June, according to the latest inflation figures released Thursday.

While PepsiCo is one of the largest food manufacturers in the world, it's far from alone in hiking prices.

At a time when the White House is sharply criticizing grocery stores for picking American households' pockets, top retail execs have been quick to point out the role of national brands in pushing prices of the products on their shelves.

"They're just making flat out more profit, so we think they actually have room to even further invest," said Rodney McMullen, CEO of Kroger, the largest grocery-only retailer in the US, of big food brands.

McMullen told investors last month he expects more discounts coming from national brands this year.

That might have already started. At Walmart, America's top grocery seller, CFO John David Rainey has said the company's discounts are "primarily vendor funded," meaning that the price cuts shoppers are seeing are being passed along from suppliers rather than Walmart bearing the cost itself.

And Target Chief Growth Officer Christina Hennington said when national brands see the Bullseye cut prices on its private label offerings, "they help us do that with their brand portfolio."

Of course, national brands have been bragging about strong profits in recent years, which would suggest they're now in a position to offer discounts and promotions without breaking the bank.

• Ilhan Omar has criticized the Biden administration for allowing what she calls a "genocide" in Gaza.
• Yet she and other Squad members are sticking with the president in his moment of weakness.
• "There is not going to be a situation where the President is being removed," she told BI.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, along with other members of the progressive "Squad," has been a staunch critic of President Joe Biden's policies on Israel.

Like other progressives, the Minnesota congresswoman has used the term "genocide" to describe Israel's war in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in the nine months since the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Omar's been pretty direct about that criticism, too, accusing the Biden administration of "greenlighting the massacre of Palestinians" at a February press conference.

Yet with Biden in his weakest political position ever, struggling to retain the support of Democrats on Capitol Hill, Omar has remained firmly behind the president, declining to join the growing number of her colleagues who have publicly called on him to step aside. She's unhesitant in defending that approach, arguing that former President Donald Trump would be worse.

"Obviously, I would like the administration to cut funding to Israel. We will continue to push for that," Omar told Business Insider on Wednesday. "I think for the genocide in Gaza, with Trump, it will be worse."

"Domestically and internationally, we will be devastated by a Trump presidency, and at this point, it is important that we do everything that we can to help we re-elect Biden," Omar continued. "So what's the conflict?"

Other progressives who have been critical of Biden on Israel, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, have also remained behind Biden after his disastrous debate performance.

A large part of their argument is simply that Biden will be the nominee, and that there's no way to change that. "The matter is closed," Ocasio-Cortez told reporters on Monday.

That's a significant contrast to progressives outside of Congress, many of whom have rallied around Vice President Kamala Harris as an alternative.

"He's the nominee. I'm fully behind him," Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York, who recently lost his primary to a moderate Democrat in large part due to his criticism of Israel, told BI this week. "The debate performance wasn't the best, but what are we going to do now? We can't have Trump and Project 2025."

Some have even suggested that Harris would handle the issue of Israel in a way that's more in line with progressive preferences, pointing to differences from Biden in her rhetoric on the topic.

But Omar wouldn't entertain the idea of a Harris candidacy.

"There is not going to be a situation where the President is being removed from being the nominee," said Omar. "It is done, case closed. I work in reality, not in fantasy."

• Wedbush analysts note a Trump presidency may hurt the EV sector but benefit Tesla.
• Higher Chinese tariffs could limit competition, giving Tesla an edge in the US EV Market.
• Overall, Wedbush writes that Trump's presidency would be an overall negative for the industry.

As Tesla's stock surges and the EV giant gears up for its (reportedly delayed) robotaxi unveiling, questions are swirling about how the impending US presidential election will impact Elon Musk's car company.

According to a note to investors from Wedbush analysts, Trump's possible return to the White House could be a good thing for Tesla.

"Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched in the EV industry and this dynamic could give Elon Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment," Wedbush analysts wrote in the note.

Additionally, the Wedbush analysts wrote that a likely increase in tariffs on Chinese goods would "continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players (BYD, Nio, etc.) from flooding the US market over the coming years."

Chinese tariffs have remained a large talking point in Trump's campaign. The Republican candidate has discussed implementing a 60% tariff on Chinese imports, largely exceeding his former tariff policy on China during his presidency.

Some of Tesla's biggest competitors include BYD and Nio, which are currently not available in the US. But Musk has previously said China is "by far" Tesla's biggest competitor. He said a lot of people think the top 10 car companies will be Tesla, followed by nine Chinese car brands, and "they might not be wrong."

Most recently, Tesla's biggest competitor BYD just made a deal to build a $1 billion factory in Turkey, which could provide the automaker with a way around EU tariffs and make it a larger threat in the global EV market.

Even though a Trump presidency could benefit Tesla, Wedbush analysts said in the note it "would be an overall negative for the EV industry" because the EV tax incentives would likely be removed.

EV tax incentives allow buyers to save up to $7,500 when they purchase a new EV, although there's some caveats to the tax break, like a limited number of eligible vehicles.

Musk hasn't announced who he's voting for in the 2024 Presidential election, but has said it's unlikely he'll vote for Biden.

Musk has met with the former President on multiple occasions and said at Tesla's annual meeting that Trump calls him "out of the blue for no reason." He also mentioned in the meeting that Trump's "a huge fan of the Cybertruck" and his friends that have Teslas "love it."

Microplastics have infiltrated our bodies, including the brain, blood, organs, and even penises. What are the health risks, and how can we avoid them?

• Ukraine is set to receive its first F-16 fighter jets from its Western partners this summer.
• But the exact number of planes is unclear, and Zelenskyy said it likely won't be enough.
• He compared the problem to Ukraine's Abrams tanks, which it only got 31 of and hasn't used much.

Western-provided F-16 fighter jets are on their way to Ukraine and set to start flying missions later this summer.

But they may not yet be enough to make a difference on the battlefield, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy indicated in a discussion this week on what Ukraine needs, comparing the jets to the US-made Abrams tanks that Ukraine got last fall.

Asked by Fox News' host Bret Baier at the Reagan Institute if the 31 Abrams Ukraine received as its counteroffensive was already stumbling made a difference, Zelenskyy said: "I'm not sure that such number of tanks can change the situation on the battlefield."

Speaking in Washington, DC, Wednesday as the NATO summit was underway, he said "it's like the dialogue about F-16." Usefulness comes down, in some ways, to numbers and timing.

"We always wait, like my mother waited me after school," Zelenskyy said. "This is the same but much more serious."

"The problem with F-16," the Ukrainian president said, "is the number and the dates."

The Ukrainian President said that because Russia is operating so many combat aircraft "on the territory of Ukraine," small numbers of F-16s won't make a difference.

"Even if we will have 50, it's nothing. They have 300. Because we are defending, we need 128," he said, adding that unless Ukraine has that amount of F-16s, they won't "compare with them in the sky." He said "it will be difficult."

As Zelenskky noted, his concerns about the number of F-16s coming and the timing of those deliveries mirror conversations surrounding the US-provided Abrams tanks, which arrived in Ukraine last fall. The US sent only 31 M1A1 Abrams in total, and they were delivered to Ukraine months after British and German tanks.

The Abrams is recognized as a "tank killer" and celebrated for its lethality and heavy armor. It has a fearsome reputation, particularly given its exploits in the Gulf War in the early 1990s. Experts and former tank operators have praised the Abrams' capabilities, noting that it is far superior to any Russian tank.

But the Abrams hasn't been able to fight the battles it was made for in Ukraine where massed armored assaults haven't been an option and tank-on-tank combat is uncommon, it faces threats from drones, anti-tank weapons, and mines, and it is a high-profile target available in only limited numbers.

For comparison, Ukraine received about 300 US-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, nearly ten times more than the number of Abrams sent.

Zelenskyy's comments follow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's announcement earlier Wednesday that the first transfer of F-16 fighters to Ukraine — coming from Denmark and the Netherlands — is underway.

"Those jets will be flying in the skies of Ukraine this summer to make sure that Ukraine can continue to effectively defend itself against Russian aggression," he said at the NATO public forum.

The arrival of the fourth-generation aircraft will be important for Ukraine and an upgrade over Kyiv's Soviet-era air power and another marker of closer relations with the West. But there have been questions surrounding how useful the fighters will be on the battlefield and if there will be enough jets and trained pilots to make a difference. There have also been concerns they may be coming significantly later than when Ukraine needed them most.

The West has attributed the long road to getting F-16s to Ukraine to complicated logistics.

"The trouble is that for F-16s, it's not as simple as just getting the planes and handing them over. The planes have to be reconfigured from the different air forces that they come from to make them suitable and usable for the Ukrainian Air Force," a NATO official said to reporters at a briefing on the sidelines of the summit Thursday.

The official also noted the training, logistics, and capabilities that are required to operate and defend airfields and said the yearlong process of procuring and delivering the fighters was "actually pretty good."

"If you look at a program like this, generally, even [when an] allied country in peacetime conditions takes on a new airframe like this, it could take much, much longer to get everything into place," the official said.

In a call with press on Thursday, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan acknowledged that the "ramp-up period" to get F-16s operational in Ukraine has been significant but added that the jets are expected to have an impact in the short-term and give Ukraine the capability to take back territory currently occupied by Russia.

• Even some White House advisors are reportedly doubting that Joe Biden can win.
• According to The New York Times, some White House officials are trying devise ways to convince Biden to drop out.
• The White House strongly denied the report.

President Joe Biden may have to convince some of his own White House officials that he's still their best hope of defeating former President Donald Trump.

According to The New York Times, some unnamed longtime aides and advisors to Biden have become convinced that the president will drop out of the 2024 race. The Times also reported that some advisors are trying to devise ways to convince the president that he should step aside.

The White House strongly denied the report.

"Unequivocally, this is not true," White House spokesperson Andrew Bates told The Times, a statement he reiterated to Business Insider. "President Biden's team is strongly behind him."

Biden has repeatedly said that he is staying in the race.

The president has tried to face down an uproar within the Democratic Party since his disastrous debate performance. Earlier this week, it looked like the White House had successfully frozen most of Capitol Hill not to pressure the president.

But on Wednesday, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that Biden had not made a final decision to stay in the race despite days of repeated statements to the contrary. Since then, more House Democrats have called on Biden to drop out. On Wednesday evening, Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont became the first Democrat in the chamber to join the chorus, saying Biden should step aside.

Not long before The Times published its story, NBC News reported that three unnamed campaign officials told the outlet that Biden has no chance of beating Trump.

"He needs to drop out," one Biden campaign official told NBC. "He will never recover from this."

Biden is set to speak to White House reporters at length Thursday night in his first extensive news conference in months. Multiple Democrats have encouraged the president to hold more unscripted events and to campaign more extensively to help convince them that he's up to the task of slogging through a reelection battle.

The president's reelection campaign sought to tamp down on the outcry, arguing that while Biden's support had slipped since the debate, the race is still very much winnable.

"There is a long way to go between now and Election Day with considerable uncertainty and polls in July should not be overestimated, but the data shows we have a clear path to win," Biden's campaign campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez wrote in a memo on Thursday to staffers. "As we've always said, in today's fragmented media environment, it will take time for our message to break through with trusted messengers and a strong ground game. That remains the case."

The campaign memo, first reported by The Associated Press and later obtained by BI, said that Biden still had "multiple" paths to 270 Electoral Votes while emphasizing that Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan "remain critical to victory."

If Biden loses Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona, which polls show he might, he would need to run the table in the old so-called "Blue Wall" states and hold onto the Omaha-area Nebraska 2nd Congressional District to win.