logo
Michelle Obama Addresses Divorce Rumors and Why She's Rarely Seen with Husband Barack

Michelle Obama Addresses Divorce Rumors and Why She's Rarely Seen with Husband Barack

Yahoo27-06-2025
Rumors of marital discord have dogged President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for months.
Buzz hit fever pitch after Michelle missed President Jimmy Carter's funeral and President Donald Trump's inauguration—but Michelle has something to say about it.
She opened up on NPR's 'Wild Card' podcast and shut down any rumors of strife in her marriage, telling host Rachel Martin, 'You just are not gonna know what we're doing every minute of the day.'Former First Lady Michelle Obama addressed those persistent divorce rumors—and why she's rarely seen with her husband, President Barack Obama—in a new podcast appearance.
Speaking on NPR's 'Wild Card' podcast on June 26, Michelle alluded to the fact that she and her husband are rarely photographed together because they're 'too old for Instagram,' according to The New York Post.
'The fact that people don't see me going out on a date with my husband sparks rumors of the end of our marriage,' Michelle told host Rachel Martin. 'It's like, 'Okay, so we don't Instagram every minute of our lives. We are 60. We're 60, y'all.''
'You just are not gonna know what we're doing every minute of the day,' she added.
The bulk of the Obama marital woes rumors began after Michelle didn't attend major events she'd typically be expected at—like the funeral of President Jimmy Carter and President Donald Trump's inauguration. 'One of the major decisions I made this year was to stay put and not attend funerals and inaugurations and all the things that I'm supposed to attend,' she said.
'That was a part of me using my ambition to say, 'Let me define what I want to do, apart from what I'm supposed to do, what the world expects of me,'' Michelle continued. 'And I have to own that. Those are my choices.'
She added, 'Whatever the backlash was, I had to sit in it and own it. But I didn't regret it, you know? It's my life now, and I can say that now.'
Michelle has opened up about her marriage on her own podcast, 'IMO,' which she co-hosts with her brother Craig Robinson, and other podcasts as well, like an appearance last month on Steven Bartlett's 'The Diary of a CEO' show. On that program, she told Barlett that if there were issues in the Obama marriage, she wouldn't keep quiet about it.
'If I were having problems with my husband, everybody would know about it,' Michelle said. 'My brother would know it. I'd be problem-solving in public. I'm not a martyr.'
And just for the record, the Obamas—who have been married since 1992 and share two daughters, Malia and Sasha—do still go on dates. The couple went on a date at the Lowell Hotel restaurant in Manhattan last month, and went out on another public date night in Washington, D.C. in April.
Read the original article on InStyle
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Amanda Knox and Monica Lewinsky just might be the team-up people didn't know they needed
Amanda Knox and Monica Lewinsky just might be the team-up people didn't know they needed

CNN

timea minute ago

  • CNN

Amanda Knox and Monica Lewinsky just might be the team-up people didn't know they needed

At a time when people are revisiting past treatment of women in pop culture, two outspoken personalities have joined forces for a new project. Amanda Knox and Monica Lewinsky are both serving as executive producers on 'The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox,' an eight-part dramatic limited series debuting Wednesday on Hulu with Grace Van Patten starring in the title role. Lewinsky and Knox are bonded in having been publicly shamed, scorned and mocked for things that happened when they were young women. Knox told The Hollywood Reporter in an article published this week that she and Lewinsky became friends in 2017 after they shared a stage in a lecture hall. She said Lewinsky invited her up to her hotel room afterwards for some tea and talk. 'She had a lot of advice about reclaiming your voice and your narrative,' Knox told the publication. 'That ended up being a turning point for me.' In 2007, Knox was a 20-year-old exchange student living in Italy when she and her then 23-year-old Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were accused of murdering her 21-year-old roommate Meredith Kercher in their shared apartment in Perugia. Knox was dubbed 'Foxy Knoxy' (her MySpace user name) and there was an early theory that Kercher's death was part of an 'erotic game' involving her, Knox and Sollecito. Knox and Sollecito were convicted and spent nearly four years in prison before their convictions were overturned and they were vindicated – though there is still debate and curiosity about the crime. There was a media frenzy surrounding the case, and if anyone knows what Knox has lived through, it would be Lewinsky. Lewinsky was also in her early twenties in the 1990s when she engaged in a sexual relationship with then-President Bill Clinton while serving as his intern. Since then she has become a writer, producer, podcaster and an activist. On Monday she talked to CNN's Erin Burnett about what drew her and Knox together. 'I could see that there was a pain in her and it's a very unique pain that I recognized,' Lewinsky said. 'So I think there was an instant connection, an instant understanding of two young women who had become public people who hadn't wanted to, and had lost a lot of their identity.' Years after Knox was first launched into the public eye, Lewinsky read a New York Times interview in which Knox spoke of wanting to turn her memoir into a movie. CNN's Erin Burnett talks with Monica Lewinsky about teaming up with Amanda Knox for a Hulu series based on Knox's life. 'I had a first look deal at the time, and I thought, you know, a story that we think we know that we don't is kind of right up my alley,' Lewinsky recalled. Hulu is marketing the limited series as telling the story of 'the eponymous American college student, who arrives in Italy for her study abroad only to be wrongfully imprisoned for murder weeks later,' adding that it 'traces Amanda's relentless fight to prove her innocence and reclaim her freedom and examines why authorities and the world stood so firmly in judgment.' Knox told THR, 'Living through this kind of experience leaves this lifelong mark on you that nobody can really understand.' 'There's a great desire to connect with people, but after being burned and taken advantage of for so long, you live with this constant terror that people will view everything you do or say in the worst possible light,' the now married mother of two young children said. 'When I met Monica, I was just glimpsing what it could mean to stand up for myself – and hope strangers would actually see me as a human being. So talking to her was a huge relief. No one had walked that walk before me more than she did.'

3 Resources To Help Companies Design And Defend Legal DEI Programs
3 Resources To Help Companies Design And Defend Legal DEI Programs

Forbes

timea minute ago

  • Forbes

3 Resources To Help Companies Design And Defend Legal DEI Programs

Business leaders are being pushed from opposite directions on diversity, equity and inclusion. These competing forces are creating confusion over the most effective path forward in designing and defending legal DEI initiatives. Most workers still value DEI practices, which impact recruiting and retention. Four out of five workers support their organization's DEI efforts, and more than two thirds say that DEI initiatives positively impact their work experience, according to a 2024 survey of 1,345 U.S. employees conducted by The Conference Board. Two out of three workers surveyed said they would not work for an employer that does not take DEI seriously, or would do so only reluctantly. Yet the Trump Administration and federal agencies that enforce discrimination laws have launched a concerted attack on DEI measures. America First Legal, cofounded by conservative Stephen Miller, has initiated multiple legal actions with the stated goal of dismantling DEI across both private and public sectors. As a result, 63% of executives in The Conference Board survey view the current political climate for DEI as very or extremely challenging. Despite these increased threats, over 80% of corporate leaders still view diversity initiatives as essential to their business strategy, based on a 2024 report by Morning Consult surveying 325 C-Suite executives at large U.S. companies. The majority of companies are seeking ways to continue their DEI investments while mitigating legal risk. In response to these conflicting pressures, legal experts have created three resources to assist companies in designing and defending legal DEI measures. 1. The Legal DEI Project In the wake of anti-DEI efforts, four employment law experts created a resource for companies to clarify the legality of DEI initiatives. Launched in June 2025, The Legal DEI Project offers a comprehensive FAQ on what discrimination laws both permit and require of employers. The Legal DEI Project's four co-founders include law professors Rachel Arnow-Richman from the University of Florida Levin College of Law, Stephanie Bornstein from Loyola Law School, Tristin Green from Loyola Law School, and Deborah Widiss from Indiana University Maurer School of Law, all of whom corresponded via email. According to the co-founders, the Project's central goal is to help employers distinguish the law from political rhetoric. Their core message: 'DEI is not illegal; discrimination is.' The Project's resources respond to executive orders that the experts say mislead employers about their legal obligations, including the order issued on January 21, 2025 titled, 'Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.' 'We were concerned that the Trump administration's executive orders were confusing and could cause employers to overreact—and understandably so,' said Bornstein. 'But executive orders don't change the law—they are policy directives that apply only to federal workers and contractors. All the federal laws, and decades of caselaw, remain exactly the same as before President Trump took office.' 'I believe academics have a public responsibility to share knowledge in times like these when honest information about the law is in short supply,' added Arnow-Richman. To help employers make more informed decisions, The Legal DEI Project offers a risk assessment of the trade-offs that companies face from maintaining versus halting their diversity initiatives. 'Businesses right now are in a hard situation,' said Widiss. 'The Trump administration has made it sound like anything associated with 'DEI' should be scrapped—but if companies simply shut down all those offices, they may increase, rather than decrease, the likelihood they will be sued for failing to address discrimination.' Retreating from DEI increases legal risk because well-designed programs help ensure fair and nondiscriminatory workplace decision making, according to The Legal DEI Project experts. Continuing DEI measures reduces legal risk because employers remain far more likely to be sued for discrimination by individuals from historically excluded groups than to be investigated by the government for diversity initiatives. To help employers design effective DEI programs, The Legal DEI Project website includes a list of common measures that remain lawful. Permissible practices include broadening recruiting strategies to expand candidate pools, and collecting voluntary demographic data on applicants and employees to assess barriers to equal opportunity. Employers may continue inclusive employee mentoring programs and antiharassment trainings, both of which reduce rather than increase legal risk. According to the Project's website, it also remains lawful—and advisable—for employers to reduce bias by linking hiring and performance evaluation criteria to objective job responsibilities and skills, using consistent interview questions and assessment rubrics, and publicizing promotion and advancement opportunities to all employees. Best practices also include evaluating the accessibility of physical, technological, and communication tools in the workplace. 2. The Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Leadership Group Employers seeking to defend DEI practices against legal challenges may access free resources on the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Leadership Group website, launched in February 2025. The EEO Leadership Group is comprised of 11 former officials of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. The EEOC is the agency responsible for enforcing federal employment discrimination laws. The OFCCP is the agency tasked with ensuring that federal contractors comply with equal employment opportunity laws. The 11 former officials created their resource website to clarify the legal status of DEI initiatives and remind employers of their legal obligations, despite the Trump Administration's curtailment of civil rights enforcement. 'Given the onslaught of attacks on civil rights in employment, we organized as former leaders of the EEOC and the OFCCP to monitor what this Administration was doing and to provide accurate and timely responses that would help employers, employees, and the general public,' said Chai R. Feldblum, former EEOC Commissioner and cofounder of the EEO Leadership Group, via email. On the Group's website, employers may access the experts' written responses to actions by the EEOC's Acting Chair Andrea R. Lucas targeting corporate DEI initiatives. One of the Group's goals is to ensure that employers understand that federal employment discrimination laws cannot be changed by anti-DEI executive orders or unilateral actions by the EEOC's Acting Chair. 'The legal right not to be discriminated against in employment cannot be taken away by a President or by an agency,' said Feldblum. 'The EEO Leadership Group provides employers information about what they are still required to do under the law, as well as what they are legally entitled to do in their efforts to increase DEI.' For example, the EEO Leadership Group website contains expert analysis of Lucas's March 19, 2025 document titled, 'What You Should Know About DEI-Related Discrimination at Work.' The EEO Leadership Group's response describes Lucas's guidance as misleading employers by overstating the legal risks of well-designed DEI initiatives and ignoring the need for DEI programs to ensure compliance with antidiscrimination laws. The EEO Leadership Group website offers advice on lawful ways to design DEI programs, including trainings to promote inclusion and avoid harassment. The Group's resources explain how to lawfully implement employee resource or affinity groups, expand applicant recruiting pools, and collect workforce data to analyze barriers to equal opportunity. 'The EEO Leadership Group also exists to provide employees with information about their rights under the law, despite efforts by this Administration to undermine those rights,' said Feldblum. Even if federal agencies decline to enforce employment discrimination laws, employees may still file private lawsuits, which means that employers must stay apprised of their legal obligations. 3. Catalyst And Meltzer Center 2025 Report On Legal DEI Organizational leaders trying to navigate DEI backlash may find comprehensive risk-assessment guidance from a report titled, 'The Risks of Retreat: The Enduring Inclusion Imperative,' published on June 11, 2025. The Report is authored by experts from Catalyst, a global nonprofit seeking to advance gender equity at work, and the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, a research institute focusing on DEI and the law. 'Many leaders are looking at all the headlines but aren't sure what's really going on underneath the surface,' said David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center, via email. 'We felt there was a need for clear and balanced guidance on this topic—informed by both empirical data and legal expertise.' A central goal of the Catalyst/Meltzer Report is to enable employers to 'weigh all the risks in the area rather than just fixating on the risks that are most salient in the media coverage of the topic (which tend to be the risks of anti-DEI lawsuits or anti-DEI government action),' said Glasgow. 'Our aim was to enable leaders to make more informed, balanced, and strategic decisions rather than purely reactive ones,' said Alixandra Pollack, vice president at Catalyst, via email. To achieve that objective, the Catalyst/Meltzer Report analyzes data from a survey of 2,500 individuals across industries in U.S. organizations with 500 or more employees, conducted from January 20 to February 11, 2025. Survey participants included 1,000 C-suite executives, 250 legal leaders, and 1,250 employees. Based on the survey results, the Catalyst/Meltzer Report warns that retreating from DEI programs can increase corporate risk in four areas. First, companies may lose talent because a commitment to DEI impacts recruiting and retention. Over 75% of employees surveyed said they were more likely to stay in a job long-term if their employer is committed to DEI, and 43% said they would quit if their employer rescinds its support. Second, companies may face financial losses from consumers who make consumption decisions based on DEI commitment. Third, companies may face reputational losses if their programs no longer align with their stated values. Fourth, companies may face increased legal risk of discrimination claims without DEI programs that reduce biased decision making. On the flip side, the Catalyst/Meltzer Report also recognizes potential risks from maintaining or expanding DEI programs in the current environment. Within the past year, 55% of the C-suite leaders surveyed said they had dealt with social media attacks, threats or protests from anti-DEI advocacy groups, or legal actions related to DEI. In light of these competing pressures, the Catalyst/Meltzer Report explains how companies can conduct a holistic risk assessment and modify DEI programs to ensure they are legally defensible. The Report encourages employers to make strategic and sustainable long-term decisions with a 'big picture' view, as most constituents still agree with the values underlying DEI measures. By sharing data from a large group of organizations, the Catalyst/Meltzer Report also enables companies to benchmark their approaches against peers that are also continuing to invest in legal DEI initiatives. 'This report seeks to equip organizational leaders and decision makers with the information and tools needed to build fair and inclusive workplaces,' said Pollack, 'ones that go beyond mere compliance to create true impact.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store