President Trump's penchant for chaos — overload the media, public and government with disorienting action and controversial figures — is consuming ... everything, Axios' Alex Isenstadt and Marc Caputo write.

• Why it matters: As Trump 2.0 hits 95 days, his less leaky, less back-stabby White House is starting to look more like the first-term one, with a surge in infighting and embarrassing public revelations.

😵‍💫 Zoom in: The administration's biggest headache of the moment is at the Pentagon — awash in firings, leaks and public warnings of ineptitude.

• The promise of Elon Musk's DOGE is fizzling out, and many administration officials wanted him out of the White House well before he said Tuesday that he'll "significantly" cut back on his government work.
• Lots of officials are dumping on trade adviser Peter Navarro, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and others for a tariff strategy that provoked a global market meltdown, even though it's really Trump's policy.
• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is covering his own hide amid a spate of leaks describing him as the economic team's voice of sanity. Oddly, good press can be one way to end up on Trump's bad side.

🎤 Mixed messaging and policy reversals from Trump himself — on tariffs, trying to fire the Fed chair, foreign policy and cuts to federal programs — have left markets, foreign leaders and even some members of his own party reeling.

📍 Between the lines: "The president thrives in chaos, and that is part of his leadership style," said Marc Short, who was chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence during Trump's first term.

• "However, I believe the first administration was more united in its policy objectives, whereas now we get a different explanation daily on trade policy and our position on the Middle East and Ukraine, etc.," Short said.

🤷‍♂️ "None of it matters. It's all noise," one senior White House official said of the criticism of the administration.

• Go deeper.

President Trump has squandered his polling strength on the two issues most fundamental to his re-election: the economy and immigration.

• Trump's approval rating is cratering not because voters reject his goals — but because they're increasingly alarmed by his methods, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.
• That disconnect threatens to collapse the two most durable pillars of his political brand.

🏦 On the economy, the single most decisive issue of the 2024 election, Trump's polling has never been worse.

• A Reuters/Ipsos poll out yesterday found 37% of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the economy — his lowest rating ever, across both terms.
• A Pew Research Center survey found Trump's overall approval rating has fallen to 40%, while confidence in his economic leadership has dropped to 45% — the lowest since tracking began in 2019.
• New Gallup polling out this week showed that a majority of Americans, for the first time since at least 2001, believe their economic situation is worsening.

🌎 On immigration, Trump is in a relatively stronger position — but cracks are starting to emerge.

• Despite a sealed-off border and a wave of high-profile deportations, Trump is now barely above water on his best issue, according to an average of polls by data journalist G. Elliott Morris.
• 50% of respondents in a YouGov survey said Trump should return Kilmar Abrego Garcia — an immigrant living in Maryland who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador — to the U.S. Just 28% said he shouldn't.

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America's manufacturers are supposed to be one of the big beneficiaries of Trump's trade war. But they're deeply apprehensive about what the economy has in store for them.

• That's the unmistakable picture from a slew of recent surveys by regional Federal Reserve banks, along with the Fed's regular compilation of anecdotal information, Axios' Neil Irwin writes.

📔 The hot-off-the-presses Beige Book, released eight times a year and based on what business contacts around the country are saying about conditions, used the word "uncertainty" 80 times.

• It follows the release of surveys of manufacturers from the Fed banks in New York, Philadelphia and Richmond in the last 10 days that have all shown a steep deterioration in the outlook.

"Business leaders indicated recent strategy discussions shifted away from capital investments aimed at innovation and efficiency toward a focus almost entirely on mitigating tariff-related risks," the Kansas City Fed reported.

Young adults are increasingly taking health decisions into their own hands, Axios' Maya Goldman reports from a new Edelman survey.

• 45% of adults ages 18-34 said they've disregarded their health provider's guidance in favor of information from a friend or family member in the past year — a 13-point increase from the previous year.

👩‍⚕️ The vast majority of young adults (82%) still said their doctor influences their health decisions. But one-third also reported that content creators without medical training had influenced health decisions.

Viewership for "Conclave" — last year's Oscar-winning film about the selection of a new pope — has skyrocketed since Pope Francis' death.

• "Conclave" streaming jumped 3,200% early this week, after news of Francis' death broke, Axios' Avery Lotz reports.

"Conclave," Focus Features says, "follows one of the world's most secretive and ancient events — selecting the new Pope. Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is tasked with running this covert process after the unexpected death of the beloved Pope. Once the Catholic Church's most powerful leaders have gathered from around the world and are locked together in the Vatican halls, Lawrence uncovers a trail of deep secrets left in the dead Pope's wake, secrets which could shake the foundations of the Church."

• The dramatized papal election in "Conclave" is "quite accurate," the N.Y. Times found (gift link).
• Former President Obama picked "Conclave" as one of his 10 favorite movies of 2024.

🎞️ It's not just "Conclave." Netflix's "The Two Popes," starring Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedict XVI and Jonathan Pryce as Pope Francis, saw a 417% spike in viewership in the days after Francis' death.

• "Conclave" trailer ... Share this story.

The executive orders President Trump signed yesterday on education included a measure to shake up the college accreditation process — an obscure but important part of higher education.

• Trump has previously described going after accreditors as a "secret weapon" in his campaign against elite universities.

📚 How it works: Schools must meet accreditors' standards in order to receive federal funding.

• Trump's executive order aims to strip diversity-related requirements out of the accreditation process, and to make it easier to form new accrediting bodies — a process that currently takes years.

🦾 He also signed a separate order creating a federal task force focused on giving students training on AI as early as kindergarten.

• More details ... Read the EO.

Art Laffer, 84, a conservative economist once praised by President Trump as brilliant and bold, blamed White House trade policy for the "most scary, in-flux" economic moment of his life.

• Laffer, the father of supply-side economics, warned that tariffs and trade barriers could wreak havoc on America's economy.

🏦 "I don't know how anyone looking at the facts could argue that protectionism doesn't create downturns," Laffer told Axios' Courtenay Brown.

• "The more protectionism there is, the greater the downturn. Reducing tariffs and protectionism causes a boom in the economy," he added.

🔎 Between the lines: Laffer is optimistic that Trump — who he called "a great negotiator" and the "single best president of his lifetime" — will notch trade deals and reduce tariffs.

• But the Reagan-era economist is worried about the economic damage in the interim. "Once you screw around with supply chains, production facilities, all of that, it's very hard to reverse that," he said.

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Mommy — a Galapagos tortoise at the Philadelphia Zoo who's estimated to be about 100 years old — recently gave birth to four baby tortoises.

• The babies hatched earlier this year and made their public debut yesterday — on the 93rd anniversary of Mommy's arrival in Philadelphia.

1-min. YouTube ... Read the announcement.