A housing regulator, a prosecutor rejected by the Senate and a former Democrat have emerged as the unlikely faces of President Trump's "weaponization" crusade, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

• Why it matters: In a sea of Trump loyalists, these three officials — Bill Pulte, Ed Martin and Tulsi Gabbard — stand out for how aggressively they've shattered norms in pursuit of the president's enemies.

1. Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has used his 3 million followers on X to reinvent the sleepy mortgage regulator as a platform for political combat.

• Pulte has elevated allegations of mortgage fraud against two of Trump's top antagonists, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Both are now under criminal investigation.
• Pulte also has led the campaign to oust Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell, calling for him to resign — or be fired — over cost overruns in the Fed's $2.5 billion headquarters renovation.
• Yesterday, Pulte escalated Trump's war on the central bank by accusing Fed governor Lisa Cook of mortgage fraud. Trump responded by calling for Cook to resign. Cook said she has "no intention of being bullied to step down."

2. Martin, a conservative activist who defended Jan. 6 rioters, was named the Justice Department's weaponization czar after his nomination to be U.S. attorney for D.C. collapsed in the Senate.

• In his brief time as acting U.S. attorney, Martin demoted prosecutors who had worked on Jan. 6 cases, vowed to pursue legal action against critics of Elon Musk's DOGE initiative, and attempted to launch an investigation into Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Now leading the DOJ's probe of James, Martin stunned ethics experts by showing up outside the New York attorney general's Brooklyn home in a trench coat and posing for tabloid photos.

3. Gabbard, Trump's director of national intelligence, sent shockwaves through the intel community by accusing former Obama officials of a "treasonous conspiracy" stemming from the 2016 Russia probe. Her allegations have electrified Trump's base.

• Gabbard went further this week, revoking the security clearances of 37 current and former national security officials she claimed had manipulated or leaked classified intelligence.
• Then yesterday, she approved plans to slash ODNI's staff by 40%.

Share this story.

Democratic Party officials are quietly battling over which state will be the first to vote in the 2028 presidential primary — a fight that's set to break into the open next week when the officials meet in Minneapolis, Axios' Alex Thompson writes.

• Nevada, New Hampshire and Michigan are currently the frontrunners to be "the new Iowa," and lead off the 2028 Democratic primary season, according to sources familiar with the Rules and Bylaws committee, which will determine the order.

Why it matters: The candidate who wins the first state primary gets a boost that can help propel them to the nomination. Potential candidates are already looking into which order of contests could benefit them the most.

🗳️ State of play: For decades, Iowa's caucuses and New Hampshire's primary kicked off the presidential primary season.

• But the order of contests has become a free-for-all since Iowa botched its caucuses in 2020, and then-President Biden changed the calendar in 2024.

Sources describe these pitches to move up in primary voting:

• 🎰 Nevada has a strong union presence, is racially diverse, and has a large working-class Latino population at a time when Democrats are losing ground with such voters. It's also a swing state.
• 🏔️ New Hampshire has traditionally been an early primary. It's a small state with engaged voters who'll give any candidate a shot.
• 🧤 Michigan is racially and regionally diverse with a mix of rural and urban residents, and is an important Midwestern swing state with a strong union presence.

Go deeper: Arguments against each state.

Instead of job-hopping, employees are now "job-hugging" — holding tight to their current employer, Axios' Emily Peck writes.

• Why it matters: The labor market is grim — and hiring has stalled. With fewer options, workers are planning to stick with their current employers, regardless of job satisfaction.

The change can mean fewer opportunities for up-and-comers inside organizations, notes consulting firm Korn Ferry, which named the trend.

🔎 Zoom in: The past three months saw the weakest job creation in the U.S. — outside of the pandemic — since 2010 in the wake of the global financial crisis.

• The white-collar employment picture is particularly bleak. Employment in professional and business services has steadily declined this year, after surging in the post-pandemic era.
• Employees are reporting high levels of job anxiety. There's also increasing fear that AI will come for their jobs.

👓 Between the lines: Companies no longer have to bend over backward to hang on to workers with benefits, promotions or raises. Instead, employers can push for workers to return to the office and put in longer hours.

• Share this story.

When thousands of New Orleans homes flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — 20 years ago this month — the city lost more than half its population overnight, Axios New Orleans co-author Chelsea Brasted writes.

• Why it matters: They went somewhere, and we're finally getting a clearer look at where they landed, thanks to never-before-seen data provided to Axios.

🔬 Zoom in: Government officials have granted only one researcher access to the granular data required to figure out where people went: Elizabeth Fussell, a Brown professor who worked at Tulane in New Orleans when Katrina hit.

• Fussell's research found that 33% of people who had been living in New Orleans when Katrina hit had not returned to the metro area by 2006.
• Of those people who hadn't returned, 21.7% were in Baton Rouge, 14.6% were in Atlanta, 11.7% were in Houston and 5.8% were in Dallas-Fort Worth.

💡 How it worked: Fussell examined New Orleans' population in the 2000 census, removing people who had died or were found living outside Orleans Parish until Hurricane Katrina.

• Fussell followed their whereabouts for each year from 2006 to 2019, again adjusting for deaths.

Keep reading ... Get Axios New Orleans ... 33 more Local cities.

A New York Times analysis found Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single state that allows voters to register with a political party between 2020 and 2024.

• Why it matters: "That swing helps to explain President Trump's success last year, when he won the popular vote for the first time, swept the swing states and roared back to the White House," The Times' Shane Goldmacher and Jonah Smith write.

🧮 By the numbers: "All told, Democrats lost about 2.1 million registered voters between the 2020 and 2024 elections in the 30 states, along with Washington, D.C., that allow people to register with a political party. (In the remaining 20 states, voters do not register with a political party.) Republicans gained 2.4 million," The Times writes.

• "That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters, a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from.

"All four presidential battleground states covered by the Times analysis — Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — showed significant Democratic erosion."

• Keep reading (gift link).

Parts of corporate America are swallowing margins to keep people spending, Axios' Kelly Tyko and Nathan Bomey write.

• Why it matters: The "value wars" are back even as tariffs threaten to push broader prices higher and cash-strapped households pull back.

Chains like McDonald's, Target, Kohl's and Pizza Hut are slashing prices on some items, expanding deals and leaning on subsidies — early proof that brands are willing to trade profit for traffic.

• Keep reading.

Third Way, a prominent center-left think tank, unveiled a proposal today calling on Democrats to build 12 million new homes through deregulation, removing tariffs and deploying the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to help with the construction.

• Why it matters: The proposal is a reflection of the growing "Abundance" movement, inspired by the bestselling book, that urges Democrats to remove red tape and focus on building things if they want to win more elections, Axios' Alex Thompson writes.

The rising popularity of the Abundance movement has drawn a backlash among some in the party's left wing, who see it as a rebrand of the corporate, deregulatory side of the party that they argue has driven away some working-class voters.

• Go deeper: More on the 5-part plan.

A "South Park" episode called "Sickofancy" satirized AI and the federal takeover of D.C. policing.

• Why it matters: Each of the three Season 27 episodes so far has roasted the Trump administration, driving online conversation and drawing the show's highest ratings and most social views ever.

The new episode shows the recurring character Towelie — a walking, talking towel — riding in a bus past the Supreme Court as armed troops march outside. A tank rolls by the White House,

• Towelie ends up with President Trump in the Oval Office. (AP)

The bulk of the episode takes "a scathing look at the culture that has emerged out of the tech boom, complete with nonsense lingo and ketamine microdosing, the overly pandering appeal of ChatGPT," The Hollywood Reporter writes.

• "Randy Marsh's marijuana farm, Tegridy Farms, faces an existential crisis when ICE agents round up its Mexican migrant workforce ... Randy turns to ChatGPT as a marriage therapist."

Watch the 20-sec. trailer (episode streaming on Paramount+).