Kamala Harris privately called New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani last week and has been holding lengthy, closed-door meetings with other prominent progressives — including pro-Palestinian activists, Axios' Holly Otterbein and Alex Thompson scoop.

• Why it matters: Signs are abundant that the former VP is laying groundwork for a potential White House run.

📱 Harris called Mamdani last Thursday to talk about the party's future and plan a longer conversation, a person familiar with the call tells Axios.

• Harris, who has occasionally texted with Mamdani in recent months, called him two days after the mayor's handpicked candidates swept three NYC congressional races, ousting two incumbents.
• In April, Harris met with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in Chicago on the sidelines of the "Power Rising" conference for empowering Black women.

🇵🇸 Harris and her team have been reaching out to pro-Palestinian activists, including at least one who helped lead the Uncommitted Movement, which grew out of opposition to former President Biden's Gaza policy.

• In 2024, the uncommitted Democratic delegates said the Harris campaign denied their request for a Palestinian American to speak at the Democratic National Convention.

Last week in Detroit, Harris met with a co-founder of the Uncommitted Movement, Abbas Alawieh, who's now running as a Democrat for a Michigan state Senate seat.

• Alawieh told Axios that Harris requested the meeting after months of private conversations she initiated.

Harris also spoke recently with James Zogby, a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee who has advocated for Palestinian rights, according to sources familiar.

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Colorado's progressive left won Democratic primaries for Congress and the statehouse last night, Axios Denver's John Frank, Esteban L. Hernandez and Alayna Alvarez write.

1. A socialist toppled a House Democrat: Melat Kiros, 29, beat 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette in Denver's deep-blue 1st District, despite being badly outspent by an incumbent who first won the seat before Kiros was born.
2. A senator went down: Attorney General Phil Weiser upset Sen. Michael Bennet, a one-time 2020 presidential hopeful, by 10 points in the governor's primary. Bennet had deeper pockets and higher name ID. But Weiser pitched himself as the tougher fighter against President Trump.
3. The establishment couldn't stop the left: A progressive won the secretary of state nomination. Several statehouse incumbents lost their primaries to left-wing challengers.

Why it matters: Colorado shows New York's Zohran Mamdani-fueled victories for the left weren't a fluke. The antiestablishment surge is real, and Democratic incumbents have good reason to sweat their own primaries.

• Even the establishment's biggest win came with a warning. Sen. John Hickenlooper won renomination, but progressive Julie Gonzales beat him in Denver and still took almost 45% statewide.

Read on.

Tensions over pesticide use erupted in a heated Oval Office meeting last week, Axios' Alex Isenstadt scoops.

• The confrontation exposed a sharp fault line in Trump's coalition: the push by RFK's MAHA movement to reduce conventional pesticides vs. farming interests determined to preserve them.

🥊 The long-running fight came to a head during a tense Oval Office meeting last Thursday.

• Trump, HHS Secretary RFK Jr., Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall met to discuss a pesticide-focused executive order.

🧑‍⚖️ Kennedy's team was already on edge over a Supreme Court ruling earlier that day that handed the pesticide industry a major legal win.

• Kennedy told Trump that his order to cut pesticides in the food supply and study their effects would help offset it, according to three people familiar with the meeting.

🧑‍🌾 Duvall, whose organization represents more than 5 million farming and ranching members, was adamant that Trump not sign the order — warning that doing so could cost him the support of farming interests.

• Jonathan Lundgren, a South Dakota farmer and former USDA official who attended the meeting, tells Axios that Duvall's decision to forcefully confront Trump was "shocking," and that the president appeared concerned and "wanted to understand why Zippy was so worried."

😡 Trump had been expected to sign the order that afternoon. Suddenly, that wasn't so certain. What followed was a clash between Kennedy's team and Duvall, according to three people familiar with the fight.

• The most heated exchange took place between Duvall and Kennedy deputy Calley Means, who told Duvall that it was clear that he hadn't read Trump's order.
• Trump eventually signed the order. Duvall then said he'd support it.

Mike Tomko, an American Farm Bureau Federation spokesman, disputed the idea that Duvall was against exploring pesticide alternatives. Tomko said Duvall's concerns centered on the "insinuation that our food supply is not safe."

The Trump administration lifted export controls on Anthropic's powerful Claude Fable 5 model, which had been pulled offline 19 days ago because of security fears. Access should return today.

• Why it matters: Claude-pilled users had been going through Fable withdrawal. "Fanning my agents out now!!" one young user texted me when the news broke last night.

The letter from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also covered Mythos 5, which is available to certain cybersecurity users. Last week, the Trump administration allowed Anthropic to restore access to Mythos 5 for a select group of government-approved organizations.

• Lutnick said in a post on X that his office had "worked closely with Anthropic to analyze and approve Fable 5 to ensure alignment across the US Government and strengthen America's leadership in AI."

🛰️ The big picture: The U.S. government's role in regulating and evaluating frontier AI models before release is still up in the air — creating an ad hoc regulatory environment for AI companies.

• OpenAI rolled out GPT-5.6 to a small set of approved customers last week after a request from the U.S. government to stagger deployment.

Read Anthropic's post, "Redeploying Fable 5."

President Trump pulled in more than $2.2 billion in his first year back in office, powered by roughly $1.4 billion from crypto ventures, new financial disclosures show, according to his 927-page disclosure, released yesterday.

The filings offer the clearest picture yet of a president profiting from an industry he regulates.

• The disclosure pegs Trump's assets at a minimum of $2.4 billion, but ranges cap at more than $50 million per holding, so the real total could be higher, The New York Times reports.
• He also reported $86.5 million from settling five suits against ABC, CBS, YouTube, Meta and X.

The White House told The Washington Post that Trump has never had a conflict of interest and any suggestion otherwise is a "tired, false narrative."

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The "Mag 7" tech giants that carried the stock market out of the COVID era are starting to look more like the Lag 7, Axios' Matt Phillips writes.

• Investors are rotating away from companies spending on AI to those supplying the equipment: Micron, Intel, etc.

Why it matters: The AI boom is creating lots of uncertainty, even for tech behemoths that have long seemed invulnerable.

😨 By the numbers: The Mag 7 were down 3.1% on average this year through Monday's close. The S&P 500 was up about 8.7% over that period.

• The S&P 500 was up 14% in the quarter that ended yesterday. That was the best three months in six years — since Q2 of 2020, when markets rebounded after the COVID selloff.

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The pressure ratchets up significantly for the U.S. men's soccer team tonight in its quest to make a historic World Cup run on American soil, Axios' Bob Gee writes.

• The U.S. faces Bosnia-Herzegovina in Santa Clara, Calif., in the round of 32 (8 p.m. ET, Fox).

🇧🇦 Bosnia is the lowest-ranked European team in the tournament.

• It's on par with Australia, a team the U.S. beat 2-0 during the group stage.

😱 Yes, but: The Americans have lost to the last 10 European opponents they've faced — a streak dating back to a 3-1 defeat to the Netherlands in the first knockout round of the last World Cup.

• One big plus: USMNT's star attacker Christian Pulisic, hobbled earlier with a calf injury, says he's good to go tonight.
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The "Great American State Fair" on the National Mall is getting some decidedly poor reviews — Washingtonian labeled it "bleak," while The Washington Post deemed it "crushingly dull."

• Some people are posting photos of sparse crowds, flimsy-looking booths and underwhelming state exhibits, Axios D.C.'s Anna Spiegel and Mimi Montgomery write.

The Pentagon's "WAR" booth and the Florida tent had the longest lines (credit a mini-golf course and "Florida Man" wall).

• Supporters are defending the event as a success. This weekend's big July 4 airshow and fireworks display are yet to come — though more blistering-hot weather could put a damper on things.

🎆 The expected start time for D.C.'s 40-minute Fourth of July fireworks show on the National Mall on Saturday night has been pushed past 11 p.m. from the advertised 10:30 p.m.

• Axios D.C.'s Cuneyt Dil has learned why: President Trump is scheduled to give an America's 250th speech on a National Mall stage beginning at 9:50 p.m., a source involved in the planning tells Axios.

Why it matters: With temperatures expected to hit 102°F and inauguration-level security on the Mall, every delay ripples through the evening — keeping people in the heat longer, slowing trips home and pushing bedtimes.

• Attendees will have to pass through TSA-level security.

🧨 The Trump-allied Freedom 250 wants to break the Guinness World Record for largest fireworks display by firing 850,000 shells over 40 minutes.

• But Trump's penchant for rollicking speeches makes it hard to pinpoint when the show starts.
• Freedom 250 announced that a military flyover will feature a "massive 17-aircraft formation" that debuts Air Force One, the Boeing 747-8 gifted by Qatar.

More fair photos.