Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is locked in open warfare with his own Pentagon, a hotbed of distrust and dysfunction that commands the most powerful military on the face of the Earth, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

• Why it matters: No Trump Cabinet official has endured more turmoil in less time than Hegseth, who survived a nasty confirmation battle only to be burned — again and again — by leaks, blunders and now backlash from his own handpicked aides.

President Trump so far is standing firmly behind Hegseth, a former Fox News host tapped to lead a radical overhaul of the largest and most complex agency in the U.S. government.

• But inside the Pentagon, the knives are out — testing Trump's tolerance for chaos when it's not his own.

🔎 Zoom in: Hegseth, whose on-camera talent helped endear him to Trump, yesterday attacked "disgruntled former employees," "the fake news media," "slash-and-burn Democrats" and journalistic "hoaxsters" for reports of a second Signal chat that included sensitive information about a March airstrike in Yemen.

• Just days earlier, three top Pentagon officials — including two of Hegseth's closest aides — were fired after an investigation into alleged leaks. All three vigorously deny the accusations.
• "What a big surprise that a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax," Hegseth said at the White House Easter Egg Roll.

"This is what the media does," he continued, turning to look directly into the camera.

• "They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees, and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations. Not going to work with me."

🥊 Reality check: Former Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot, who resigned just last week, didn't hide behind anonymity when he uncorked his "Month from Hell" op-ed in Politico on Sunday, suggesting Trump should fire Hegseth.

• Ullyot said the Pentagon has been in "full-blown meltdown" for the past month — and that more "bombshell" leaks should be expected.

📺 "This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News.

• Leavitt's quote was then amplified by the Defense Department's rapid-response account on X — with "ENTIRE" in all-caps.

The extraordinary claim — that the nerve center of American military power is actively working to sabotage its own civilian leader — reflects the depth of suspicion that has taken root inside the Pentagon.

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🇻🇦 Bulletin: Pope Francis' funeral will be Saturday at 10 a.m. (4 a.m. ET) in St. Peter's Square, with President Trump attending. Francis' casket will be brought into St. Peter's Basilica tomorrow, allowing ordinary faithful to pay respects.

The next pope will take over a Roman Catholic Church with dwindling membership in Europe, North America and Latin America — but surging numbers across Asia and Africa, Axios' Russell Contreras writes.

• Why it matters: That's a big reason why two of the cardinals widely seen as top contenders to lead the church are from Asia and Africa — regions where the 1.4-billion-member church is focused on increasing its influence.

Cardinal Luis Tagle of the Philippines and Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson are top contenders to be the next pope, said Andrew Chesnut, the Bishop Walter F. Sullivan chairman in Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

• The conclave's election of either would be a dramatic, history-making moment for the Catholic Church.

There hasn't been a pope of Asian descent for more than 12 centuries. It's been even longer since there was a pope believed to have been from Africa. Twelve years ago, Francis became the first pope from Latin America.

Tagle, the son of wealthy Filipino and Chinese families, is from a region seen as a gateway to China, where the church is eager to expand, Chesnut said.

• Turkson, who comes from a family of 10 children in Western Ghana, is from a region that already has an exploding rate of church membership.

🔭 Zoom out: Francis, a progressive, spoke out against economic inequality, warned about climate change, and sympathized with migrants, the poor and the marginalized.

• He also affirmed that transgender people could be baptized and supported same-sex unions.

Either Tagle or Turkson would be seen as representing a moderate-leaning "correction" in the Roman Catholic Church.

Other possible candidates include Cardinal Secretary of State of the Vatican Pietro Parolin of Italy, a moderate, and Cardinal Péter Erdő of Hungary, a leading candidate of the church's conservative wing.

• Keep reading.

President Trump is toeing an economic red line that few before him have dared even consider crossing, Axios' Courtenay Brown and Neil Irwin write.

• Why it matters: The mere possibility that Trump could erode the Federal Reserve's independence has been enough to unnerve investors and tank the stock market.

Trump risks plunging the global financial system into crisis if that threat becomes a reality and he attempts to remove Fed Chair Jerome Powell or undermine his authority.

• "Were Powell to be fired, the initial reaction would be a huge injection of volatility into financial markets, and the most dramatic rush to the exit from U.S. assets that it is possible to imagine," Michael Brown, a market analyst at brokerage firm Pepperstone, wrote in a recent note.

Trump demanded "major loser" Powell preemptively cut interest rates "NOW," in a Truth Social post yesterday.

🖼️ The big picture: It's easy to imagine why a president would want low interest rates and cheap money policies that help juice the economy.

• But no U.S. leader in the past half century has taken the risk of trying to force the Fed's hand.
• Keep reading.

📜 Time-capsule headline: "The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed almost 1,000 points on Monday and is headed for its worst April performance since 1932," The Wall Street Journal reports (gift link).

• "The S&P 500's performance since Inauguration Day is now the worst for any president up to this point in data going back to 1928 [the year before the Great Depression began], according to Bespoke Investment Group."

America's obsession with countering mis- and disinformation has withered as society grows skeptical of institutions once trusted with facts, Axios' Sara Fischer writes.

• Why it matters: Professional fact-checking went mainstream during the first Trump administration, but it's since become politicized.

Americans are less enthusiastic about policing information today than they were two years ago, and the trend is bipartisan, according to Pew data.

🧮 By the numbers: Mentions of "misinformation" and "disinformation" across the country's three biggest cable news networks — MSNBC, Fox News and CNN — have declined considerably since the pandemic, according to data from Stanford's Cable TV News Analyzer.

• Keep reading ... Get Axios Media Trends.

Anthropic expects AI-powered virtual employees to begin roaming corporate networks in the next year, the company's top security leader told Axios' Sam Sabin in an interview this week.

• Why it matters: Managing those AI identities will require companies to completely reassess their cybersecurity strategies.

🖼️ The big picture: Virtual employees could be the next AI innovation hotbed, Jason Clinton, the company's CISO, said.

• These AI identities would have their own "memories," their own roles in the company and even their own corporate accounts and passwords.

Keep reading.

Nearly a fifth of U.S. adults aged 25 to 34 were living with their parents as of 2023, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick writes from a Pew analysis.

• Why it matters: That's down a bit after steadily increasing from 2000-2017 — a period marked by multiple financial crises.

By the numbers: Vallejo, Calif. (33%), Oxnard, Calif. (32.8%), and Brownsville, Texas (30.5%), have the highest shares of young adults living with their parents among metros with at least 250,000 residents.

• Lincoln, Neb. (2.9%), Springfield, Mo. (6.7%), and Utica, N.Y. (7.8%), have the smallest.

Keep reading.

The N.Y. Times obit of Herbert Gans — a sociologist who died yesterday at 97 after spending his life studying urban and suburban life, poverty, ethnic groups, and the news media — revealed a colorful back-and-forth with the paper's editorial section:

His letters to the editor were often published by The Times. In 1986, he took issue with an editorial, "Dear DC Comics," suggesting that Clark Kent's future in journalism might be as an editorial writer. No, no, no, Dr. Gans wrote, Superman would soon be caught in conflicts of interest — battling villains supported by the newspaper.

"Better make him a movie reviewer," Dr. Gans suggested. "Or how about the obits?"

Full obit (gift link).

Have you ever tasted raindrops from Tasmania that never touched the Earth? Or water that's been locked inside a Norwegian iceberg for millennia?

• This weekend, you need to be in Atlanta, this year's location for the annual Fine Water Summit of water sommeliers, Axios' Thomas Wheatley writes.

Expect roughly 1,000 bottles of rare, expensive and hard-to-find waters — and a crowd-pleasing taste contest.

• Keep reading ... Get Axios Local.