A growing number of Democrats are ringing the alarm that their party sounds — and acts — too judgmental, too sensitive, too "woke" to large swaths of America. 

• Why it matters: These Democrats warn that by jamming politically correct terms or new norms down the throats of voters, they risk exacerbating the cultural wars — and inadvertently helping Trumpian candidates. 

Top Democrats confide that they're very aware of the danger. Already, we've seen a widespread pullback in the "defund the police" rhetoric.

• Former NYPD captain Eric Adams, who this week won New York City's Democratic mayoral primary, showed his party the power of a message that supports police while including justice and reform.
• "If we are for SAFETY — we NEED the NYPD!" Adams says on his campaign site. "At the same time," he acknowledges, "we face a crisis of confidence in our police."

Democratic strategist James Carville has been warning his party about this for months, telling Vox in an April interview:

• "You ever get the sense that people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges use a different language than ordinary people? ... This is not how voters talk."

Conservative columnist Peggy Noonan wrote this week in the Wall Street Journal (subscription) that she believes the left is misreading its position and "overplaying its hand."

• She cited a new essay by Kevin Drum, formerly of Washington Monthly and Mother Jones, who wrote: "[T]he truth is that the Democratic Party has been pulled far enough left that even lots of non-crazy people find us just plain scary — something that Fox News takes vigorous advantage of."

On the flip side, "How to Be an Antiracist" author Ibram X. Kendi, who directs Boston University's Center for Antiracist Research, wrote in The Atlantic on Friday that Republican operatives "have conjured an imagined monster to scare the American people and project themselves as the nation’s defenders from that fictional monster."

What we're hearing: Moderate and swing-district lawmakers and aides tell Axios' Margaret Talev and Alayna Treene that the party could suffer massive losses in next year's midterms if Democrats run like Sen. Elizabeth Warren is president.

• One former Senate aide said it's "bye-bye majority" if Democrats run on "extreme wokeness."

Between the lines: The big question is how different the midterms will be from 2020. People voted for Democrats in November when the same talking points and ideas were being discussed. The presidency was at stake, but the other cultural or social issues were the same.

What to watch: This tension is a huge test for President Biden. He knows that the rising left in his party, while great for fundraising and media coverage, could be electorally disastrous.

• Axios' Kim Hart contributed reporting.

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President Biden's consumer-friendly, pro-competition executive order yesterday "took aim at how businesses from cable TV firms to airlines to drug companies to cellphone makers push the little guy around," as L.A. Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik put it:

• "We’ve been writing about some of these indignities for years, and some of the remedies Biden proposes long have been on the wish list of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing."
• Read on for the columnist's capsules on: Airlines ... Big Tech ... Right to repair ... Net neutrality ... Health care ... Labor mobility.

🥊 Axios insight ... The two provisions, among 72 initiatives in a White House fact sheet, which could have the biggest impact:

• Biden calls on the top antitrust agencies — the DOJ and FTC — "to enforce the antitrust laws vigorously and recognizes that the law allows them to challenge prior bad mergers that past Administrations did not previously challenge."
• "Big Tech platforms gathering too much personal information ... In the Order, the President: Encourages the FTC to establish rules on surveillance and the accumulation of data."

🗞️ How it's playing ...

Teachers and civil rights activists are organizing and preparing to go to court to stop conservatives' efforts to block curriculum about institutional racism, Axios' Russell Contreras reports.

• The NEA vowed to expand teaching of anti-racism and diversity in American classrooms, despite the growing backlash.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten tells Axios her union will defend teachers' right to teach American history — and will aggressively protect any educator accused of violating new laws and restrictions.

• "We're looking at court actions because these laws conflict with standards and our licensure requirements and our professional obligations," she said.

Keep reading.

Tomorrow's flight to the edge of space by Richard Branson could help bring in more customers for Virgin Galactic, Axios Space author Miriam Kramer writes.

• Virgin Galactic is expected to stage two more test flights before entering into full commercial operations in 2022.

How it works: Branson will fly with three other passengers and two pilots.

• The system uses a carrier aircraft to loft the space plane — named Unity — to altitude. From there, the plane drops and its rocket engine kicks on, propelling the crew about 50 miles above the Earth's surface.
• The crew will feel weightlessness, floating through the cabin before strapping back in and gliding back down for a landing.

How to watch: Virgin Galactic will stream the launch live via its website starting at 9 a.m. ET.

• Stephen Colbert is set to host the livestream. Khalid is expected to premiere a new song once the crew comes in for a landing.

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Interest in space coverage has exploded leading up to the historic flights between billionaire space entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, Axios' Sara Fischer, Miriam Kramer and Neal Rothschild report.

• Why it matters: Bezos and Branson are both hoping to make space tourism a big business. Their rivalry is sparking widespread interest in spaceflight that could ultimately translate into future customers.

Many news companies have hired designated space reporters, as private spaceflight takes off.

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The Robert E. Lee monument that helped spark the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville was hoisted off its stone pedestal today.

• Spectators by the dozens lined the blocks surrounding the park.
• A cheer went up as the statue came down, AP reports.

The statue of Lee and another Confederate general, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, will be stored in a secure location until the City Council decides what to do with them.

• 📷 More photos.

Laura McGann, former politics editor of Vox.com and Politico, and Mark Bauman, previously with Smithsonian, National Geographic and ABC News, will launch a yet-to-be named media company in late September, Axios Media Trends expert Sara Fischer reports.

• McGann and Bauman plan to go deep on rising topics like misinformation, climate and Chinese geopolitics.
• The pair will report to a board of five news and politics veterans: David Ensor, Chris Isham, Madhulika Sikka, Alberto Fernandez and John Defterios.

Matthew Yglesias, McGann's former Vox Media colleague, will join as editor at large.

• The company has posted 22 openings, and hopes to have at least 60 staff by year's end.

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Mark Zuckerberg surprised a council of top Facebook executives in July 2018 by declaring: "Up until now, I’ve been a peacetime leader ... That’s going to change."

• The account appears in a closely held book that'll be out Tuesday, "An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination," by the N.Y. Times' Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang.

The group, the authors write, "had endured eighteen months of one bad news cycle after another. They had been forced to defend Facebook to their friends, family, and angry employees. Most of them had little to do with the controversies over election disinformation and Cambridge Analytica."

• The book says Zuckerberg had been influenced by ideas in "What You Do Is Who You Are," by Ben Horowitz — who's half of Andreessen Horowitz, the VC firm that invested early in Facebook, along with Marc Andreessen, Zuckerberg’s friend and a Facebook board member:

Horowitz argues that at various stages of development, tech companies demand two kinds of CEOs: wartime and peacetime leaders. In periods of peace, he writes, a company can focus on expanding and reinforcing its strengths. In times of war, the threats are existential, and the company has to hunker down to fight for survival. ...

From that day forward, Zuckerberg continued, he was taking on the role of wartime CEO. He would assume more direct control over all aspects of the business. He could no longer sequester himself to focus only on new products. More decisions would fall to him.

Facebook says Zuckerberg told the leaders they’d have to be more decisive, and would need to move forward even when there wasn't a clear consensus. His view was that it was wartime, and he needed to run the company as a wartime CEO.

• Go deeper: Read a N.Y. Times adaptation (subscription).