President Trump is carrying his insatiable appetite for controversy into the most unforgiving stretch of the electoral calendar, fortified by a decade of political survival, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

• "Bottom line, it's gonna all work out. You know why? It always does," Trump told reporters this week.

Why it matters: Gone are the days of a single "October surprise." It's been swallowed by a barrage of scandals, provocations and shattered conventions that have persisted in the closing weeks of Trump's final midterm election.

The big picture: Axios has documented Trump's steady demolition of presidential norms in his second term, from the transition through his first 100 days and first year in office.

• This year, even the threat of losing Congress — and with it, much of his ability to pursue his agenda over the next two years — has done little to temper the pace or audacity of Trump's presidency.

🗓️ Consider the first 15 days of October alone, and the succession of controversies that might have shaken the foundation of a more conventional presidency:

• Raid on a political opponent: Federal agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar's (D-Minn.) home and seized her phone as part of an investigation aimed at stripping the sitting member of Congress of her U.S. citizenship and ultimately deporting her, The Wall Street Journal reports.
• Calls to shoot leakers: Trump declared at an Arizona campaign rally that officials who leak sensitive military information "should be shot," invoking an earlier era when he claimed the government routinely executed leakers.
• Concessions to Vladimir Putin: Trump eased sanctions on Russian diesel, demanded the ouster of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and pressured Kyiv to stop attacking Russian refineries, even as Moscow continued bombing Ukrainian infrastructure.
• Federal crackdown on the press: The Justice Department launched an antitrust investigation into ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC after the networks suspended White House TV pool coverage to protest Trump's ban on three news organizations.
• $5,000 election promise: Trump pledged to send every adult American a $5,000 check if Republicans retain control of Congress, explicitly tying more than $1 trillion in proposed federal payments to the outcome of the midterms.

The other side: Three October episodes forced Trump into rare retreats.

1. A televised execution: Trump scrapped the plan to livestream a convicted mass murderer's execution by firing squad after bipartisan outrage.
2. An ambassador's downfall: Trump forced Kimberly Guilfoyle — who was engaged to his son for four years until 2024 — to resign as ambassador to Greece after reports that she solicited $100,000 from a political donor to cover personal credit-card bills.
3. A five-day press secretary: Trump ousted Katie Zacharia amid scrutiny of her legal credentials and a widely criticized debut. Axios reports Trump was blindsided to learn that Zacharia — whom he had introduced as an attorney — had never passed the bar exam.

What they're saying: Far from seeing October as a month of political peril, the administration is celebrating it as a continuation of Trump's record.

• White House assistant press secretary Allison Schuster told Axios: "Since Day 1 of his administration, President Trump has boldly and consistently fulfilled his campaign promises to protect national security, make America beautiful, secure the border, crack down on crime, ensure free and fair elections, and make life more affordable."

The bottom line: Trump is treating a moment of maximum political vulnerability like business as usual, betting that the instincts that carried him this far won't fail him now.

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Elon Musk's spectacular unveiling of a flying, rocket-powered Tesla Roadster could be seen as a boisterous farewell to Tesla, the car company, Axios' auto expert Joann Muller writes.

• Why it matters: The Roadster is a dazzling celebration of automotive engineering, but Musk increasingly envisions a future in which humans don't drive at all — and Tesla is more an AI and robotics company than an automaker.

🖼️ The big picture: With speculation mounting about a possible Tesla-SpaceX merger, the Roadster offers a tantalizing glimpse of how the two companies' technologies might intersect.

• Tesla's first Roadster, introduced nearly 20 years ago, helped launch the electric vehicle revolution by proving that EVs could be fast, sexy and fun.
• The new Roadster takes that idea to an almost absurd extreme, using SpaceX rocket technology and powerful suction fans to perform gravity-defying stunts.
• And while Tesla can still push the boundaries of automotive engineering, its mainstream vehicle lineup is aging, sales have struggled and Musk is increasingly focused on robotaxis, Optimus robots and artificial intelligence.

The intrigue: Thursday's demo arguably had little to do with selling cars.

• Not every version of the Roadster will be street legal, and Musk had some fun while acknowledging the risks of driving a rocket-powered car.
• "This is not necessarily a safety-optimized car," he said Thursday. "But ... it takes the fun meter to 11 out of 10."

🏁 The bottom line: The original Roadster announced Tesla's arrival as a car company. The new one might be its most extravagant exit.

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Black voters may determine whether Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) can build on breakthroughs in the 2026 elections, Axios' Russell Contreras and Andrew Pantazi write.

• Why it matters: This year's primaries showed that DSA's path runs through older Black voters who wield enormous influence in Democratic primaries — particularly in the South — but have been slower to embrace insurgent candidates.

🖼️ The big picture: Older Black voters have long been the Democratic Party's kingmakers.

• Many prize electability, imposing what New America's Theodore Johnson calls a "viability hurdle" before taking a chance on someone outside the establishment.

Zoom in: This year's primaries offered fresh tests of that dynamic — particularly among young Black voters.

• 🐊 In Florida, state Rep. Angie Nixon became the first DSA member to win a major-party statewide nomination. Her vote share rose in precincts with younger and larger Black populations.
• 🎸 In Detroit, Donavan McKinney's victory in a primary for Michigan's 13th congressional district showed a DSA-backed candidate can break through in a center of Black political power.
• ⚾ But in St. Louis, progressive former Rep. Cori Bush lost to more moderate Rep. Wesley Bell. She led among younger voters, but just 19% of the Black likely-primary electorate was under 50.

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Elon Musk tells biographer Walter Isaacson in a new podcast interview that the fizzled DOGE experiment, which the SpaceX and Tesla CEO once headed, proved there's "no way we were gonna solve the deficit from within the government."

• "The only way we're going to solve the national debt is with AI and robots," Musk tells the author for a new podcast series, "The Builders with Walter Isaacson," premiering Tuesday. "We're not gonna solve it by trying to save our way there."

Why it matters: Musk's comments to Isaacson — author of the definitive 2023 biography, "Elon Musk" — admit that DOGE was a flop, but point to the chance that some future administration can take a new stab at the problem using ever-more-capable AI.

🔬 Zoom in: Musk said the appetite to cut spending "is not there at the presidency, the House, the Senate or the judiciary."

• "Maybe if the president made that his primary goal, we could do that," Musk added. "If you try to solve the deficit and stop wasteful spending, you make a lot of enemies. President Trump likes to be liked. He doesn't like people calling him, being upset about ... some funding being stopped."

Musk admits he "kinda got carried away, basically" and that he wound up being "gone for too long" from his companies.

• "What I should have done," he added, "was be more in the background ... and probably only had it last for a month or two" rather than the four months he was formally in the White House.
• "I should have gone back and focused on AI a little sooner than I did."

The big picture: Isaacson warned this week that Steve Jobs and the other great creators of the personal computer age would be cautious about autonomous AI agents not tightly connected to human control.

• Isaacson includes his warning in the new preface to an updated edition, published this week, of his sweeping 2014 history of the digital age, "The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution."

Behind the scenes: Isaacson tells me he launched "The Builders" because he wanted to press the builders of this new AI age on these dangers and hear in their own voices what motivates them.

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Before hiring Katie Zacharia for her five-day stint as White House press secretary, President Trump wanted to recruit former Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, two administration sources told Axios' Marc Caputo.

• Bartiromo, who was bounced from Fox's air last month but is still being paid under her contract, signaled she wasn't going to take the job.

"She's no longer on air, but she's still on the Fox payroll and the taxpayers can't compete with that," a source told us.

• Conservative commentator Scott Jennings was in contention but wasn't offered the job.

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A teacher threw her phone at the teenage gunman who killed four people at an elementary school in Bend, Ore., then tackled and fought with him, likely saving lives before he was shot by a father who followed him into the building, police said yesterday.

• City of Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz called the teacher's actions "heroic" during a news conference and said she wasn't injured.
• He identified the attacker as 16-year-old Griffin J. John II and said all of the victims were shot in the same classroom.
• John was once a special needs student at Silver Rail Elementary, authorities said, and he attacked a classroom with special needs students.

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Secret records obtained by The Washington Post (gift link) reveal $333 million in donations from corporations and billionaires bankrolling the White House ballroom.

• The list includes donors who benefited from government contracts, regulatory decisions and a presidential pardon involving a family member.

🎁 The biggest corporate donors include Apple ($25m), Nvidia ($25m), Microsoft ($10m), Palantir ($10m) and Lockheed Martin ($10m).

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A 3,156-pound pumpkin in Coventry, R.I., was certified by Guinness World Records as the largest pumpkin ever weighed.

• Ron Wallace's behemoth crushed the previous record by nearly 300 pounds, becoming the first pumpkin to break the 3,000-pound barrier.
• He grew it inside a greenhouse, and there was "near-perfect" weather for much of the growing season, he told Guinness.

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