Feeling more anxious? More unsure? Unless you're heavily sedated, you should be: We've never witnessed so many population-wide shifts simultaneously in our lifetime, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column.

• Three titanic tectonic plates are shifting at once: our technology, our governing and our reality-shaping. Washington, D.C., is the epicenter of all three.

Why it matters: You can't navigate business, politics, social media or life generally without understanding the speed, consequence and interconnectedness of these shifts.

• Think of this as a wide-angle lens on the world unfolding before you in real time.

Let's break down the three shifts, starting with the most apparent:

1. A once-in-a-century shift in politics and governance. President Trump reinvented, in substantial and lasting ways, the Republican Party ... then American politics ... then American governance. We just wrote about 15 ways Trump is stretching the imperial presidency to unprecedented lengths. That's but a small sampling of how he reordered politics, top to bottom.

• Trump and the reaction to him are reshaping what the parties believe or stand for, and who votes for them ... the language and platforms politicians use ... the relevance and popularity of institutions and outside experts ... and the way other nations view us. The politics and norms of one short decade ago are unrecognizable today.

2. A once-in-a-generation shift in how our realities are formed. Stop thinking about news as a way to understand the world. Instead, lock in on the ways splintering information inputs — the shards of glass — shape our individual realities. The very act of writing about individual-based realities would have seemed nonsensical a decade ago. Today, it's not even debatable.

• As a society, we're breaking into hundreds or thousands of information bubbles, shaped and hardened based on our age, politics, jobs and interests. Pick six random people — and it's possible all get most of their information on platforms the others never visit, and trust people the others have never heard of. This is a wild new world. This change is only accelerating with the fast decline of TV and cable, traditional print and digital media, and local news. In its place: an even faster rise of podcasters, YouTubers, Substackers, and digital communities.
• This speed of change is particularly benefiting Trump-aligned media: In just a few-month period, CBS was bought by a more Trump-friendly owner — who pursued Bari Weiss and her iconoclastic digital media operation, The Free Press, to help run it. Trump last week signed an order turning significant control of TikTok, the most popular platform for young people, over to Oracle, founded by Larry Ellison — father of David Ellison, the new CBS owner. Local-TV heavyweights Sinclair and Nexstar briefly continued preempting Jimmy Kimmel, even after ABC put him back on-air. Nexstar is seeking federal approval to merge with Tegna.
• Defunding NPR and PBS has gutted local media even further — while national media, much of it based in D.C., gets more attention. Trump has pushed aggressively to bring independent agencies that regulate media and tech closer to the Executive Branch, and thus his agenda.

Your takeaway: The reality-shaping machines are changing faster than most people can keep up with.

• ⬇️ Column continues below.

"Behind the Curtain" continues, with the third tectonic shift:

3. A once-in-a-generation (and maybe lifetime) technology shift. AI has the promise (and high likelihood) of upending society at a scale greater than the internet, and possibly as profoundly as fire or electricity. We've explained in great detail our obsession with AI, and our reporting on the good, bad and very ugly that might unfold.

• With the tech world so enmeshed in the Trump administration and dependent on government funding, regulation and adoption, Silicon Valley is starting to influence D.C. like Wall Street once did, as Axios' Dan Primack put it. It's the Great Fusing: Washington and Silicon merging because of codependence, necessity and urgency.
• Make no mistake: AI is getting better, faster, and more human-like in its thinking than most realize. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told us it could destroy half of all white collar jobs in a few short years and has a 25% chance of essentially destroying humanity.

Sit with that sentence for a minute. We're unleashing a technology with potentially God-like powers many years from now. And we've yet to find a single CEO who has told us privately they're not curtailing hiring based on the promise of AI to do the work humans do.

The bottom line: You might find this wide-angle lens horrifying or illuminating. But you'd be hard-pressed to debunk any of it based on what's unfolding before our eyes.

• Never before has the nation needed more people spending more time thinking more originally about how to adjust government, business and personal thinking to meet a wild moment.

💡 Let us know what you think: Just hit "reply," or write [email protected] & [email protected].

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President Trump's meeting today with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could boil down to a binary choice: Accept my plan for ending the war in Gaza, or risk a public rift with the U.S. and face even worse international isolation, Axios' Marc Caputo and Barak Ravid report.

• Why it matters: For the first time since he returned to the White House, Trump appears ready to break with Netanyahu on Gaza and pressure him to make peace.

Trump told Axios in a phone interview on Sunday that his Gaza plan is in its "final stages" and that Netanyahu is on board. But the Israeli prime minister's public statements have been far more ambiguous.

• Today's White House meeting includes a lunch and press conference. Trump is hoping to announce a deal after the meeting.

Friction point: Trump has never publicly blamed Netanyahu for prolonging the war with Hamas or failing to deliver a deal to free the remaining hostages.

• But if Netanyahu says no this time, some of Trump's aides think he might turn on the prime minister. Support for Israel and the war in Gaza has sunk to new lows, including at the White House and MAGA world more broadly.
• "Everyone — and I mean everyone — is exasperated with Bibi," said one administration official familiar with the peace talks.

State of play: White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner met Netanyahu in New York for several hours yesterday to try to bridge the remaining differences between the U.S. and Israel over Trump's 21-point peace plan.

• Both Witkoff and Kushner have "just about had it" with Netanyahu, the Trump adviser claimed: "Steve was handling Israel more, and Jared was with the Arab states. But both are at their wits' end with Israel."

More from Trump interview ... Share this story.

Ford CEO Jim Farley tells Axios' Joann Muller that not enough attention is being paid to the "essential economy" — construction, maintenance and skilled trades.

• Why it matters: New factories, supply chains and data centers won't get built without skilled electricians, construction workers and other tradespeople.

"If we are successful — when we are successful — we'll take on bigger, higher-class problems," Farley says. "Right now, the problems we're trying to solve are pretty practical: I need 6,000 technicians in my dealerships on Monday morning."

• Farley is rallying leaders in business, technology and government with a summit tomorrow in Detroit, "Ford Pro Accelerate: A New Agenda to Power America's Essential Economy."

Keep reading ... More on the summit.

Some congressional Democrats are going so far as to check their own personal finances after the indictment of James Comey, Axios' hardworking Andrew Solender has learned.

• "Many are ... going through mortgages, tax returns, etc.," a senior House Democrat told Axios.

Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.) told Axios he "did a big push ... to educate members on liability issues, and many purchased professional liability insurance."

• Keep reading.

An ex-Marine smashed a pickup into a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints church in Michigan, opened fire and set the building ablaze during a crowded Sunday service, then was fatally shot by police.

• At least four people were killed and eight wounded, and authorities were searching the building ruins for more victims, AP reports.

The attack occurred about 10:25 a.m. while hundreds of people were in the building in Grand Blanc Township, outside Flint. The man got out of the pickup, with two American flags raised in the truck bed, and started shooting, police chief William Renye told reporters.

• Authorities identified the shooter as a 40-year-old from the neighboring small town of Burton. The FBI considers it an "act of targeted violence."

Get the latest ... Go deeper: Attacks on houses of worship over past 20 years.

New York Mayor Eric Adams, who has faced a federal bribery indictment and stunningly low approval ratings as the leader of the nation's largest city, dropped his bid for a second term, Reuters reports.

Why it matters: His departure, just over a month before Election Day, effectively leaves a contest between democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani — the overwhelming favorite — and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The fear among Mamdani's critics had been that Adams and Cuomo would split the opposition vote, giving Mamdani an easy victory.

• A New York insider told Mike: "With Mamdani already up, the added perception of him as the anti-Trump candidate will seal the victory."

Adams made the announcement in a nearly nine-minute video that showed him walking downstairs to Frank Sinatra's "My Way" while holding up a large photo of his late mother.

• Recent polls showed single-digit support for both Adams and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa. Trump advisers have discussed finding administration slots for Adams and Sliwa as a way to juice Cuomo, the N.Y. Times reported early this month.

📱 President Trump told Reuters in a phone interview: "I think that gives Cuomo a much better chance ... I do welcome it."

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"One Battle After Another" — an American epic of rebellion and resistance that opened this weekend, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor and Sean Penn — is "a grand throwback, the all-too-rare movie that has the chance to dominate the cultural conversation," Variety writes.

• Paul Thomas Anderson's ultracontemporary opus is a $130 million-plus gamble by Warner Bros. that audiences will come out for a 170-minute-long powerhouse drama from one of cinema's most celebrated auteurs, the way they turn up for a franchise or superhero movie. (AP)

Watch the trailer ... Read a review.