Axios

President Trump trained elected Republicans to obey him, even when they disagreed.

• Elected Republicans trained Trump to expect obedience, even as his demands grew impossible to satisfy.

Why it matters: Years of Republicans submitting to Trump, often against their own judgment, have curdled into a rolling crisis as Washington nears the likely end of the GOP's two-year monopoly.

Vice President JD Vance headlined an RNC fundraiser on Thursday night in Palo Alto, California, at the residence of influential investor and All-In Podcast host Chamath Palihapitiya, raking in $4.2 million for the Republican Party, a source familiar with the dinner tells Axios.

Why it matters: Vance, who worked in venture capital before becoming a U.S. senator from Ohio, has always had strong ties to Silicon Valley and the tech world.

Washington is racing to sell the world on American AI just as China's cheap and capable models are becoming harder to ignore.

Why it matters: Chinese models don't have to beat OpenAI or Anthropic to reshape the global AI order. They just have to be useful, available and widely adopted.