Public attention to former President Trump's legal drama has declined with each subsequent indictment, Axios' Sara Fischer and Stef Kight report from data about viewership, social media and search activity.

• Why it matters: Despite the unprecedented criminal charges against a former president, the shock is starting to wear off — for now.

What's happening: Americans have turned to Google in droves to find information about Trump and the topic of "indictment" with every new case.

• Searches spiked with all three indictments. But the spikes are getting smaller — indicating slowing interest.
• Social media interactions with stories about Trump indictments have followed a similar trend, according to NewsWhip.

On TV, coverage of Trump's first indictment in April drew a huge spike in viewership, according to Nielsen ratings.

• Subsequent indictments have drawn fewer viewers. Last week's coverage of Trump's third indictment and arrest drew roughly the same level of viewership as the second indictment in June.

🔎 Between the lines: Viewer interest mirrors campaign-finance data. Trump's campaign received a smaller bump in donations during his second indictment compared to the monstrous spike after his first, Politico reports.

🖼️ The big picture: Interest in national news and politics has plummeted in the Biden era, even amid Trump's legal dramas.

🔮 What to watch: "[T]he audience will come roaring back, I would predict, as soon as major trials are underway," NYU professor Rodney Benson told Axios.

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Iowa, Michigan, Kansas, Wisconsin and Minnesota are the top five states using robots in manufacturing, Axios global tech correspondent Ryan Heath writes from a new report by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• Why it matters: Robots are fundamentally changing how economies operate, much like electricity and the internet.

🖼️ The big picture: The U.S. robot economy is "highly skewed" and split into three tiers, according to the report.

• Three-quarters of America's robots are clustered in just 10% of U.S. regions, while the bottom 50% have almost no robots.

🧠 What's happening: There's also a robot cluster effect. Companies are more likely to use robots if others nearby use them and if they're located in manufacturing hubs.

• That dynamic is driven partly by the presence of "robot integrators" — businesses that specialize in helping companies acquire and install robots.

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After an unexpectedly tough scrap for donations, former Vice President Pence is now part of a field of eight that has qualified for the first GOP presidential debate, Axios' Erin Doherty reports.

• The debate will be Aug. 23 in Milwaukee, airing on Fox News.
• Candidates who appear to have hit the thresholds to participate: Pence, former President Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

Between the lines: This list is based on campaigns' claims — the RNC won't announce a roster until just before the debate.

• Criteria include polling and fundraising (minimum: 40,000 donors).

This was D.C. at 5:47 p.m. local time yesterday, after a storm warning so severe that federal workers were sent home at 3 p.m.

• The National Weather Service issued a Level 4 out of 5 risk for severe storms for the first time in about a decade, but the storms were generally less severe than feared, the WashPost's Capital Weather Gang reports.

💬 AP photographer Jacquelyn Martin tells me she made this stunning photo out the window of a press van as the motorcade returned to the White House, after President Biden left 90 minutes early for Arizona to beat the storm.

• Storm latest.

Orange barricades and metal fences are set up outside the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta in preparation for a possible fourth indictment of former President Trump.

• Pryor Street (above) in front of the courthouse was closed to traffic at 5 a.m. yesterday and is expected to remain blocked through at least Aug. 18, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to seek a grand-jury indictment in coming weeks in her investigation into efforts by Trump and allies to overturn the 2020 election results.

• Willis has developed a sprawling racketeering indictment that includes influencing witnesses and computer trespass, The Guardian's Hugo Lowell reports.

1. Campbell Soup announced the purchase of Sovos Brands — including the iconic Rao's pasta sauces from the impossible-to-get-into restaurant in East Harlem — for $2.7 billion. Go deeper.
2. KKR is buying legendary publisher Simon & Schuster from Paramount for $1.62 billion in an all-cash deal — putting one of the country's biggest book publishers under private-equity ownership. Jonathan Karp remains president and CEO. Go deeper.

CNN anchor and chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto will be out in March with "The Return of Great Powers," on the "definitive break between the post–Cold War era and an entirely new and uncertain one."

• "I feel like I've been researching this book for 25 years — through multiple assignments in China, Russia, Europe and Asia," Sciutto says in a forthcoming release.
• "I've seen the threads of great power conflict developing over those years, and now we're witnessing them come together in a truly dangerous time."

💬 Sciutto tells me he has been working on the book since anchoring and reporting from Lviv on the first day of the war in Ukraine, in February 2022:

• "The invasion struck me as a clean break with the previous 30 years of relative peace in Europe — the post-1989 era we'd all celebrated and grown accustomed to."

Back in 2019, when he published "The Shadow War," Sciutto says "the war among the great powers was in the shadows. Now it has gone hot."

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The storied Big 10 athletic conference will really be the Big 18 beginning with the '24 football season, after Friday's additions of the University of Oregon and University of Washington — on top of the earlier adds of USC and UCLA.

• That will leave the Pac-12, once the "Conference of Champions," as a Pac-4 of Cal (U.C. Berkeley), Stanford, Oregon State and Washington State.

What's happening: The Pac-12 failed to adapt to the rapidly changing TV landscape, AP's Joe Reedy writes.

• Media rights have far surpassed ticket sales and donor contributions as the revenue driver for athletic programs.
• But the Pac-12 failed to land a new TV deal after ESPN and Fox weren't willing to pay what the struggling conference was seeking.

The mass exodus to the Big Ten and Big 12 leaves the Pac-12 in dire straits.