Nearly half of respondents in a new Axios Vibes survey say it's harder to afford groceries now than a year ago, vs. 19% who say it's easier and 34% who say it's about the same, Axios' Margaret Talev and Neil Irwin write.

• Why it matters: Rising costs helped seal President Trump's 2024 win.

🖼️ The big picture: "The midterms might hinge on a 'Cleanup on Aisle 4!'" said John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll, which conducted the survey.

• Gerzema called grocery bills "such a visible signal that life is harder today than it was even last year when we were in an election cycle ... [Consumers] don't feel like things are changing fast enough. This is going to be a significant issue for the president."

🐘 The other side: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Axios' Alex Isenstadt that Trump "recognizes he inherited the worst inflation crisis in a generation from Joe Biden, and that is why he has tasked his admin with fixing it. Grocery prices are coming down, such as egg prices, which have plummeted by nearly 80%, and we recognize there is more work to be done."

📈 Breaking it down: Overall inflation for food has been elevated but not particularly extreme, clocking in at 3.2% for the 12 months ended in August, per Labor Department data.

• Prices are higher for some staples like ground beef (up 13% in the past year) and coffee (up 21%). Egg prices are up 11% year-over-year, but down significantly from their peak in March during the bird flu scare.

😞 Zoom out: The survey findings are part of a broader phenomenon. Consumer sentiment and confidence data are depressed despite many measures of well-being — the unemployment rate, the stock market, GDP growth — looking pretty good.

🧮 By the numbers: Just 47% of respondents say Trump has had a positive impact on the economy. Fewer than 1 in 3 think his tariffs have helped.

• Full story + methodology.

The Trump administration went after Democratic leadership where it hurts on shutdown Day 1, targeting blue states with spending freezes, firings and cuts, Axios' Justin Green and Kate Santaliz write.

• Why it matters: Democrats effectively bet that President Trump wouldn't — or couldn't — follow through on mass firings and spending cuts during a shutdown.

1️⃣ On Day 1, the Trump administration:

• Froze $18 billion in federal funds for New York City's mass transit system. The administration said it's reviewing "discriminatory, unconstitutional contracting processes." But it's also the home city of Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer.
• Froze $8 billion in climate projects across 16 blue and purple states.
• Fired most of the advisory council members for the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Washington Post reports.
• Told House Republicans to expect "consequential" layoffs across the federal workforce, sources told Axios.

🔮 What to watch: Like with DOGE, Democrats expect the final calls on these decisions to be made by the courts.

• Effects on daily life, by Axios' Herb Scribner.

📈 Breaking: OpenAI "has completed a deal to help employees sell shares in the company at a $500 billion valuation, propelling the ChatGPT owner past Elon Musk's SpaceX to become the world's largest startup," Bloomberg reports.

OpenAI's new Sora app gives us a fast-forward view of a future in which AI video, social media and the attention economy fuse into one giant mucky, murky, reality-corroding pool of virality, Axios' Scott Rosenberg writes.

• Why it matters: Feeds, memes and slop are the building blocks of a new media world where verification vanishes, unreality dominates, everything blurs into everything else, and nothing carries any informational or emotional weight.

📱 Driving the news: OpenAI's Sora 2 AI video maker and Sora app, released Tuesday, let users make and share AI-based short videos starring themselves, their friends and anyone else who gives them permission to be included.

• The new Sora follows the launch of Meta's Vibes, a TikTok knockoff that's composed entirely of AI-made videos.

📽️ Both companies are betting the public's interest in AI video isn't just a brief infatuation with a technical novelty, but the start of a foundational shift in media consumption.

• Five friction points ... Sora 2 announcement.

More women are leaving the workforce, pushed out by a lack of childcare support and stricter return-to-office policies, Axios' Emily Peck writes from a new KPMG analysis.

• The departures started after pandemic-era support for childcare lapsed in 2023. They now seem to be accelerating due to a weakening job market and Trump-era federal job cuts and policies.

📉 Breaking it down: College-educated mothers with very young children are seeing the biggest declines.

• Fathers with very young kids actually had slight increases in labor force participation.
• Women's labor force participation is still higher than pre-pandemic levels.

👀 What to watch: The trend could be bad news for household finances and economic growth.

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Liberal activist David Hogg is off to a shaky start in his mission to usher in a new generation of leaders, Axios' Alex Thompson and Holly Otterbein report.

Why it matters: Hogg, 25, who became well-known after the Parkland school massacre of 2018, was elected the DNC's vice chair this year before resigning amid an internal rebellion. He's one of the most divisive figures in the party's civil war over why it lost the 2024 election and how to move forward.

• Hogg's organization, Leaders We Deserve, has frustrated its own supporters by not endorsing any challengers to Democratic incumbents in Congress.

🫏 The backstory: Hogg's group scored a big victory in June when it donated $300,000 to the Working Families Party PAC to help Zohran Mamdani in the final stretch of his successful campaign in New York's mayoral primary.

• Hogg told the N.Y. Times in April that his group would spend $20 million backing younger leaders and primary challengers to Democrats in safe congressional seats to help end a "culture of seniority politics."
• Outraged DNC leaders said party officers must be neutral in Democratic primaries. With party members calling for another vice chair election, Hogg left his DNC position in June.

🔎 By the numbers: Hogg has accused Democrats of being overly reliant on political consultants. But his group is spending most of its money on such firms, according to campaign finance reports.

• Keep reading.

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban told Axios' Maxwell Millington he sees AI as "the great democratizer" for entrepreneurs.

Money quote: "Right now, if you're a 14- to 18-year-old and you're in not so good circumstances, you have access to the best professors and the best consultants."

• "It allows people who otherwise would not have access to any resources to have access to the best resources in real time. You can compete with anybody."

Keep reading.

Elon Musk became the first human worth $500 billion:

• Forbes' "Real-Time Billionaires" list ranks Musk at No. 1, with a net worth of $499.1 billion as of yesterday's close of trading. Earlier in the day, he passed $500 billion.

🔋 Why it matters: Tesla's stock soared to records over the past month, with Musk's other startups also surging in valuation this year, Axios' Jason Lalljee writes.

Flashback: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison briefly eclipsed Musk last month as the world's richest person after his stock in Oracle skyrocketed.

🔮 What we're watching: Musk could become the world's first trillionaire if he fully earns his new pay package at Tesla.

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Legendary primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall died at 91 of natural causes while in California on a U.S. speaking tour.

• Her work documenting the behavior and remarkable intelligence of chimpanzees in East Africa made her one of the world's most famous scientists and a pioneer for women in her field.

💙 Words of wisdom: Here's what she told Axios' Bill Kole in an interview for his 2023 book about longevity, "The Big 100":

• "Aging hasn't worried me, and death itself holds no fear for me at all. At a big lecture, somebody asked me what my next adventure would be. I'd never been asked that before. Maybe 10 years ago I would have said, 'Well, I want to go into the wild, unexplored jungles of some faraway country.'"
• "But now, no. So, I said, 'Well, dying.' And there was a kind of gasp that went around this huge auditorium. But when you die, there's either nothing, in which case I don't have to worry anymore, or there's something. And if there's something, which I happen to believe, then what an adventure it'll be to discover what that is."

Read reaction: Environmentalists, politicians, celebrities salute Goodall's influence.