As smoke and debris swirled over the Syrian presidential palace this past week, the chatter in the West Wing grew louder: Benjamin Netanyahu is out of control, Axios' Barak Ravid and Marc Caputo report.

• "Bibi acted like a madman. He bombs everything all the time," a White House official told Axios. "This could undermine what Trump is trying to do."

Why it matters: Six U.S. officials tell Axios that despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire on Friday that halted escalation in Syria, the week ended with the White House significantly more alarmed about Netanyahu.

👀 A second senior U.S. official pointed to this week's shelling of a Catholic church in Gaza, which led President Trump to call Netanyahu and demand an explanation. "The feeling is that every day there is something new," the official said. "What the f***?"

• A third U.S. official said there's a growing sense inside the Trump administration that Netanyahu's trigger finger is too itchy and he's too disruptive: "Netanyahu is sometimes like a child who just won't behave."
• Netanyahu's spokesperson didn't respond to a request for comment.

Behind the scenes: "The bombing in Syria caught the president and the White House by surprise," a U.S. official said. "The president doesn't like turning on the television and seeing bombs dropped in a country he is seeking peace in."

• Trump has refrained from public criticism and tried to influence Netanyahu privately. It's not totally clear if he shares his advisers' recent concerns about Israel's actions in Syria.

"Bibi's political agenda is driving his senses. It will turn out to be a big mistake for him long-term," a U.S. official said.

• Another U.S. official said the damage the Israelis had done to their standing with Trump over the past week didn't seem to be breaking through to them: "The Israelis need to get their head out of their asses."

Story continues below.

The tensions came after Netanyahu met with Trump twice while in D.C. two weeks ago, and the two leaders seemed closer than ever in the afterglow of the war with Iran, Barak Ravid and Marc Caputo report.

• In addition to Syria and the attack on the church in Gaza, the murder of Palestinian American Saif Musallet by a mob of Israeli settlers last weekend also sparked pushback from the Trump administration toward Netanyahu's stridently pro-settler government.

Mike Huckabee — the U.S. ambassador to Israel, who days earlier visited Netanyahu's corruption trial in a show of support — released a series of statements calling the attack "terrorism" and demanding answers. Yesterday, he also visited a Christian community in the West Bank that had been targeted by settler attacks.

• Huckabee, long an effusive supporter of Israel, criticized the Israeli government this past week for making it harder for American evangelicals to obtain travel visas.

🇮🇱 The other side: The Israelis were surprised by the U.S. pushback over the Syria strikes.

• A senior Israeli official said Trump had encouraged Israel to hold parts of Syria during his first weeks in office, and hadn't previously expressed concerns about Israel's interventions in the country.

Share this story ... Tal Axelrod contributed reporting.

In his second term, President Trump is making a habit of taking action on topics plucked from America's popular imagination that had previously been non-existent in Washington's policy playbook.

• These are "group-chat issues" — stuff you'd text your friends about that doesn't usually get picked apart by policy wonks, Axios' Neal Rothschild writes.

Trump said on Truth Social that Coca-Cola agreed to use real cane sugar in Coke. For decades, high-fructose corn syrup has been Coke's sweetener. (The company hasn't confirmed his claim.)

• The topic has been steadily gaining attention in the U.S., with interest in Mexican Coke — which uses cane sugar — rising for years, according to Google Trends.

There's also ...

1. Alcatraz: Trump stunned the country by announcing this spring that the notorious prison island — closed for more than 60 years — would be reopened. The move is inspired "more by symbolism than necessity," Axios' Marc Caputo reported.
2. The penny: The administration took action on the ultimate pocketbook issue by announcing plans to discontinue the 1-cent coin.
3. JFK files: He indulged a decades-long national fascination with the JFK assassination by releasing 63,000 pages of records.

Zoom in: On some lesser-noticed, Seinfeldian issues, Trump addressed everyman gripes with the stroke of a pen.

• He signed executive orders to maintain "acceptable water pressure in showerheads" and curb the use of paper straws.

Share this story.

If you're a new grad, America's biggest cities aren't the best ones to find your first job.

• "In one of the toughest markets for entry-level jobs in years, several second-tier cities rise above the pack for their strong hiring, decent salaries and affordability," The Wall Street Journal reports from a new study by payroll-services provider ADP (gift link).

💼 Top 5 cities for job hunters:

1. Raleigh, N.C.
2. Milwaukee
3. Baltimore
4. Austin
5. Birmingham, Ala.

The study also zeroed in on metro areas with the lowest hiring rates. The bottom four were Virginia Beach, Va., Salt Lake City, Riverside, Calif., and Hartford, Conn.

• Explore the data.

Today marks six months into President Trump's second term — Day 182, with 1,280½ days to go. Day 200 will be Aug. 7.

• "Six months is not a long time to have totally revived a major Country," Trump bragged on Truth Social this morning. (Full post above.)

Two top MAGA online influencers are featured today by old-school Sunday papers:

Alex Bruesewitz — a top Trump digital adviser, and engineer of the 2024 campaign's podcast strategy — tells The Sunday Times (London) that some of MAGA's best online content comes from everyday fans.

• "These guys make some of the best memes, and they're bus drivers in small towns across the country," Bruesewitz, 28, told Washington correspondent Lara Spirit. "And they get off of work and they go home and they open their computer, they tell their wife they love them and they log on to X for the next five hours of their life. And they're making hilarious memes of the president or videos of the president."

Bruesewitz — who has 600,000 followers on X and is CEO of X Strategies, based in Palm Beach — met his fiancée, Carolina Urrea, during a campaign stop with hosts of the "Girls Gone Bible" podcast in Vegas. They brought a friend, a former Miss Nevada. The next day, Carolina took a photo with Trump, who gave her a thumbs-up.

• Keep reading.

Brett Cooper — a podcast star popular with young MAGA, who signed last month as a Fox News contributor — is the cover story in today's N.Y. Times Sunday Business: "Striving to Make Conservatism Cool."

• Cooper says conservatives of the past undervalued pop culture: "This is our real life, especially for young people ... The majority of our lives aren't spent debating policy and debating political candidates. It's spent engaging with social media, and that's where we learn values."

Cooper, 23, lives on a farm outside Nashville with 10 cows, 10 chickens, five pigs and three ducks, The Times' Jessica Testa notes. Cooper has 1.3 million Instagram followers and 1.6 million YouTube subscribers.

• She's in her third trimester of pregnancy, plans a book of essays and "is brainstorming a consumer product — a subscription cookie dough business has been floated." As influences, she named "Reese Witherspoon, whose media company adapts book club selections into scripted projects, and Gwyneth Paltrow, who turned her wellness newsletter into the Goop retail brand."

Keep reading (gift link).

It's National Ice Cream Day, and prices for America's go-to frozen treat are hitting new highs, Axios' Kelly Tyko writes from federal data.

• The price of a half-gallon is up nearly 33% since June 2021.

Soaring ingredient costs, extreme weather and hot demand are fueling the rise.

• Chocolate-based flavors have been hit by a surge in global cocoa prices, which have increased 150% in the last 12 months.

Go deeper: Where you can get deals on ice cream today.

A bright spot in central Texas after the devastating Guadalupe River flooding:

• Dondi Voigt Persyn of Boerne, Texas, is running "Found on the Guadalupe River" — a Facebook group that works to return everyday items that may now mean everything to flood-affected families, Axios San Antonio's Madalyn Mendoza writes.

🧸 Zoom in: Persyn began looking for personal items such as clothing, jewelry and stuffed animals when she joined the search for survivors after the flood.

• That led to the Facebook group, which has crossed 40,000 members just over a week after launching.

Many families are getting items that belonged to loved ones, including children from Camp Mystic.

• "All of those things matter to someone," Persyn says. "I treat everything like it belonged to my grandchildren."

The latest: Last night, officials said the number of missing in Kerr County, in the Texas Hill Country, plummeted to three people, down from nearly 100, after most were confirmed safe.

• Flash floods killed at least 135 people in Texas over the Fourth of July weekend — 107 of them in Kerr County.

Share this story.

Mahjong — the centuries-old Chinese strategy game often associated with older generations in the Asian diaspora — has a new wave of young players.

• Between 2023 and 2024, the number of mahjong events on Eventbrite surged 179% in the U.S.

In Houston, one of the cities leading mahjong's revival, local company That's aMAHJzing is offering lessons and hosting tournaments, Axios Houston's Shafaq Patel writes.

• In San Francisco, another hot mahjong city, people of all backgrounds are showing up to learn and play at places like 13 Orphans, a recently opened mahjong den and speakeasy, Axios San Francisco's Shawna Chen reports.