Many Americans will remember exactly where they were when they first saw the gruesome video of Charlie Kirk's assassination, which flooded X within minutes — impossible to avoid, impossible to forget, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

• Why it matters: On the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Americans once again were grappling with the psychological toll of violent images seared into public consciousness.

But unlike that singular moment of collective trauma, today's violence is packaged in an endless stream — shootings, stabbings, bombings, suffering — pushed onto social feeds in real time.

• These violent shocks have become a routine feature of daily life online, with each new video layered onto an already polarized, anxious and overstimulated society.

🔎 Zoom in: On Elon Musk's X, far more than any mainstream competitor, the guardrails are gone.

• The platform's retreat from content moderation has turned it into a frictionless delivery system for the most graphic material imaginable — fully integrated in the digital town square.

What once was shocking is now ambient, rewiring how millions of people process violence and, in turn, how they experience the world.

• Even on platforms with stricter rules, enforcement is imperfect — and the gray zones of content moderation are most easily exploited in the chaos of breaking news.

The 31-year-old conservative activist was gunned down in front of thousands of college students while answering a question about mass shootings.

• His killing came amid a surge of online outrage over the stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte train — a horrific act captured on surveillance video and shared millions of times online.
• For nearly two years, images of dead, starving and mutilated civilians in Gaza have saturated the internet and fueled the most toxic discourse imaginable.

👓 Between the lines: All of these tragedies reflect the uncensored reality of our world. But our brains aren't designed to ingest and cope with it every hour of every day.

• Psychologists have found that repeated exposure to graphic violence online can cause "vicarious trauma": PTSD-like symptoms in people who witness suffering secondhand, through their screens.

The bottom line: The U.S. has endured waves of political violence before, particularly in the 1960s, when assassinations, bombings and street clashes reshaped the nation.

• But those shocks arrived in newspapers or sanitized on the evening news — not in a constant loop on our phones. And the grainy Zapruder film of JFK's assassination is a far cry from today's 4K iPhone footage.

Share this story.

🧠 What we know about the investigation, via AP:

• Officials are pleading for the public's help to catch the shooter, who has remained at large for over 36 hours.
• Investigators have obtained clues, including a palm print, a shoe impression and a high-powered hunting rifle found in a wooded area along the path the shooter fled.
• They have released photos of the person they believe is responsible and a video showing the apparent gunman racing across the roof of the building where the shot was fired, dropping down to the ground and fleeing into the woods.

Get the latest.

In the debut episode of "The Axios Show," out this morning, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick tells me President Trump plans a major push to cut prescription drug prices within weeks.

• "The president was talking about this all day on Saturday. ... He was talking about 'we got to drive these prices down,'" Lutnick said in his historic office, being shown on camera for the first time in this administration.

Trump sent letters in July to the CEOs of 17 large companies — including Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, AbbVie and Pfizer — demanding a "binding commitment" on price reductions, bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. and direct-to-consumer sales.

• Lutnick said Trump is mobilizing executive branch agencies to turn up the pressure.
• "I just got the call from [Health Secretary] Bobby Kennedy. I got a call from [CMS administrator] Mehmet Oz and said, 'OK, let's get to work on this,'" Lutnick said.

Lutnick recalled the high drug costs he faced while being treated for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

• "I mean, they're great American companies, but they sell for $1,000 here and $200 overseas. Come on, that's got to change. Let's get them all to 500 bucks and we're all better off," he said.

🔬 Zoom in: Trump's "most-favored nation" policy calls for charging the U.S. less for drugs than comparable countries.

🥊 Reality check: Trump proposed a version of the most-favored nation policy in his first term, but it got bogged down in legal challenges from the drug industry and never took effect.

In response, Alex Schriver, senior vice president of public affairs at PhRMA, the drug industry trade group, said: "Importing foreign price controls would undermine American leadership, hurting patients and workers."

• "To reduce price differentials with other countries, policymakers should rein in health care middlemen driving up costs for Americans and get foreign countries to pay their fair share for innovative medicines."

🍿 WATCH: Axios.com ... YouTube.

President Trump loves to boast about his singular ability to control global events and leaders.

• But there are two notable exceptions: his ally Benjamin Netanyahu and on-and-off adversary Vladimir Putin, Axios' Dave Lawler and Barak Ravid write.

Why it matters: The wars in Ukraine and Gaza have been the two dominant global crises of Trump's second term.

• But despite his promises to end both wars, he's seemed doubtful lately about his ability to influence the men prolonging them.

👀 Behind the scenes: Trump has conceded to confidants that he misjudged Putin's desire for peace, but he rejects the notion he's being manipulated by Netanyahu, a source with direct knowledge told Axios.

• A senior White House official admitted similarities in the frustration Trump and his team feel about their inability to end the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza.

Zoom in: Trump reacted in almost identical terms Sunday when Russia launched the largest aerial attack of the war on Ukrainian cities, and on Monday when Israel bombed Qatar, a U.S. ally.

• "I'm not happy with the whole situation," Trump said of the Russian strikes, claiming once again that he's prepared to impose sanctions.
• "I'm not thrilled about the whole situation," Trump said of Israel's stunning attack, which he didn't learn about until missiles were in the air, according to U.S. officials. He privately told Netanyahu not to do it again, but stopped short of a public condemnation.

Keep reading.

President Trump shakes hands with New York Yankees star Aaron Judge in the team's clubhouse before last night's game, which he attended to mark the 24th anniversary of 9/11.

• Trump told the team he had been close with the late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner: "We won every time I came."

The Yankees beat the Detroit Tigers last night, 9-3.

• Watch Trump's clubhouse speech.

A series of swift deal maneuvers over the past few weeks suggests David Ellison — son of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, the newly crowned richest person in the world — is looking to quickly buy his way to the top of Hollywood, Axios Media Trends author Sara Fischer writes.

• Why it matters: Few moguls have access to enough money to be able to acquire major companies, sports rights and film rights all at once. Fewer have the political capital to get away with a massive media deal blitz in the Trump administration.

For Ellison, 42, now is a ripe time to move in on distressed media assets that are struggling to survive in the streaming era.

• Now that his company, Skydance Media, has finally completed its merger with CBS owner Paramount Global, he is looking ahead to bigger targets.

State of play: The company is working on a cash bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal that would give it access to another major news network, CNN, and a rival Hollywood studio, Warner Bros. Pictures.

• Keep reading.

OpenAI and Microsoft have reached preliminary terms on a revised partnership deal that clears a path for the maker of ChatGPT to restructure itself, Axios AI+ author Ina Fried writes.

• Why it matters: OpenAI's meteoric rise as the tech industry's AI standard-bearer has always been shadowed by the company's complex, unorthodox structure.

Now CEO Sam Altman has a chance to move forward with changes that both he and his investors believe are key to meeting the company's vast capital needs — and avoiding a replay of the boardroom drama two years ago that saw Altman fired and then rehired within days.

• Keep reading.

Anthropic head of policy Jack Clark tells us that the company is planning a major D.C. expansion to ensure it's preparing lawmakers for how AI could reshape American industries within the next year, Ashley Gold writes in Axios AI+ Government.

• Why it matters: AI is moving too fast for policymakers to keep up with. Anthropic is warning Washington it's about to get exponentially crazier.

Anthropic plans to double its employee count in D.C., opening an official office in 2026 after outgrowing its coworking space with employees focused on product, policy, and trust and safety.

• Clark and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei will visit House and Senate members next week.

Sign up for today's launch of Axios AI+ Government, our new Friday edition of Axios AI+ with a focus on how governments are encouraging, regulating and using AI.

A water lily from a botanical garden in Florida held up a whopping 183 pounds to win the Denver Botanic Gardens' third-annual Waterlily Weigh-Off.

• Over a week in August, 48 competitors in nine countries posted videos on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, placing various weighted objects on top of their giant lily pads.

🏆 In the winning waterlily's case, that amounted to:

• 10 eight-pound bags of oranges.
• Seven five-pound chunks of granite.
• Four 12-pound sandbags.
• One 20-pound circular foundation to help distribute the weight.

Share this story ... Get Axios Local, newsletters in 34 cities.