House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) faces mounting behind-the-scenes frustration from progressive lawmakers and candidates that's likely to burst into public view after the midterm elections, Axios' Andrew Solender writes.

• Why it matters: An influx of Democratic Socialists of America-aligned members in January will compound latent distrust of Jeffries that's festering in some corners of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

🔎 Zoom in: Jeffries has made several recent moves that left Progressive Caucus members fuming, according to multiple lawmakers, candidates and aides.

• Medicare for All: Jeffries said on NBC's "Meet the Press" last month that Medicare for All is "not legislation ... that I support." He said in a later radio interview that he supports universal coverage, but there are "different paths" to get there.
• Kushner meeting: Jeffries' sit-down with President Trump's son-in-law rankled progressive groups. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told reporters: "I don't know what that was about."
• Rule change: A proposal to penalize members who don't pay their dues to the party's campaign arm, or who break with leadership on procedural votes, was seen by progressives as a preemptive attempt to cut off dissent from the left.

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Our bestseller "Smart Brevity" gave companies a common language and skill set to simplify communications. A week from today, Jim, Roy, and I will be out with "Simplify: Do 50% More with 50% Less," which gives you tools to kill complexity so you can be happier and more productive.

Why it matters: We're hearing from lots of overwhelmed leaders trying to simplify how their organizations operate. But it's hard to get everyone aligned to make it happen. And AI turns out to be a massive complexity-generation machine, drowning us in decks and dashboards.

• Your solution: "Simplify."

Case in point: Roy ran across a podcast featuring psychologist Ron Friedman, author of "Superteams," who has studied how to cut through the bloat of meetings and messages to give you more time for work that matters. Among his findings that match the "Simplify" mindset:

1. The average office worker spends 18 hours a week in meetings and 11 hours digging through messages. That's 73% of the week — leaving just over one day a week for real work.
2. High-performing organizations ruthlessly cut back on standing meetings, stand-ups and check-ins. "Meetings are a last resort, not a default," he says.
3. Friedman recommends meeting-free days, when no one is expected to respond to in-the-moment messages. He calls these "Get Things Done Days."

Want more productivity power tools? "Simplify" will help you, and everyone in your company, do the right work ... not more work.

• Preorder "Simplify."

In his weekly C-Suite newsletter, Axios CEO Jim VandeHei walks through the four most plausible emerging AI scenarios:

1. The techno-optimists are right: So far, AI capabilities have advanced faster than almost anyone predicted. Yes, the tech is imperfect — but it would be foolish not to assume it keeps getting meaningfully better with each passing month. This is my dominant assumption.
2. An AI catastrophe hits: I work under the assumption that something big and bad will hit in the next 18 months, most likely a widespread cyberattack or bio-engineered virus set loose by a bad actor. This will instantly reset politics and AI advancement. Assume swift, severe backlash.
3. Shut-it-down politics explode. If something bad happens — or even if data centers keep rising in unpopularity, or job losses start to mount — Democrats seem ready to turn hard against AI. Bernie Sanders, the dominant voice of the left, has already called for a pause. He introduced legislation that would imprison anyone building superintelligence.
4. The messy middle persists. This is a very plausible — and some think most likely — outcome. AI keeps advancing, but not so fast or transformationally as the optimists think. Our employees use it more and more, but it simply takes longer to connect to existing data, systems and security layers to truly upend work and life as we know it.

📈 Share this story ... If you're a CEO or on a CEO's team, ask to join Jim's new weekly Axios C-Suite newsletter.

Democrats have gained sharply with Latino voters in some of the country's most competitive House districts since 2024, Axios' Russell Contreras writes from a new Hart Research/TelevisaUnivision poll.

• Democrats are gaining ground with Latino voters across a survey of 17 competitive House districts, opening a 58%-35% lead on the generic congressional ballot.
• That 23-point margin is double the 11-point edge Kamala Harris held over Trump in the same sample's self-reported 2024 vote.

The intrigue: 11% of Latino voters who say they backed Trump in 2024 now support Democratic congressional candidates.

• More from the poll.

The WNBA, Major League Baseball and even a golf startup spent the summer as unlikely proxies in some of the country's fiercest national conflicts, Axios' Noah Bressner writes.

• Why it matters: American culture has shattered into thousands of tiny shards of glass. Sports remain one of the few forces powerful enough to pull much of the country into the same moment — making it a prime target for political fights.

🥊 This summer's fights have blown up far beyond the fan bases:

1. Caitlin Clark, the WNBA's biggest star, spent the season absorbing hard fouls. The fight over whether refs were protecting her quickly became a fight about race. Eleven House Republicans wrote to the league, and the topic has become a staple on conservative media.
2. Clark's Indiana Fever teammate Sophie Cunningham told ESPN in July that girls shouldn't have to compete against "biological men." Competing activist groups have clashed outside WNBA games, with Cunningham's words and photos appearing on signs held by her supporters.
3. Three San Francisco Giants pitchers wrote Bible verses on their rainbow caps for Pride Night in June. The Justice Department referred the league to the EEOC for possible religious discrimination after it warned the players about violating uniform rules.
4. Good Good Golf, a popular YouTube channel and apparel brand, posted an ad last month showing its co-founder shoving a female golfer to the ground. Callaway responded to the uproar by ending a three-year partnership, and Good Good withdrew as the title sponsor of a new PGA Tour event.
5. President Trump's shadow hung over this summer's World Cup.

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The U.S. military has covertly engaged in a risky four-month operation to de-mine the Strait of Hormuz with Navy SEAL divers, robot boats and specialized underwater craft, the Financial Times reports.

• Navy divers — working in small teams on inflatable craft — located Iranian mines with the help of sonar arrays towed by robot boats and submersibles, allowing them to see objects in the ocean at high resolution.
• Bill Hamblet, a retired U.S. Navy captain who often operated in the Gulf, told the FT that it's "usually followed up by a navy diver who's got to get in the water and approach the mine, and then put a charge on it and destroy it."

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More than 100 Republican House members and candidates are expected at the American Airlines Center in Dallas for the party's first-ever midterm convention tomorrow and Thursday, running for six hours each night, 4-10 p.m. ET. (with competition from NFL season openers).

• Lots of lawmakers in competitive races are taking a pass or hedging about their plans.

Organizers have scheduled 50+ speakers or presentations each night, with many of the slots kept brief for easy online sharing. Everyday Americans, including former Democrats, will take turns onstage talking about how they've benefited from Trump policies.

• President Trump will speak each night. Vice President JD Vance will keynote Thursday.

📺 C-SPAN plans gavel-to-gavel coverage, and C-SPAN2 will be on the campaign trail with Democrats.

• Speaker lineup.

This year's hot summer box office — anchored by "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," "The Odyssey" and "Toy Story 5" — broke the record for ticket revenue from May 1 through Labor Day with $4.76 billion in sales.

• Revenue narrowly passed the $4.755 billion in sales from 2013.

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