Former President Trump's violent rhetoric has grown more extreme as the walls have begun to close in on his business empire, livelihood and personal freedom, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

• Why it matters: Since he left office, Trump's erratic behavior has been masked, numbed and normalized by the political fatigue permeating the media and the public.

His words' violent turn in recent weeks — suggesting a U.S. military leader be executed, mocking a potentially fatal assault on a congressional spouse, urging police to shoot shoplifters — suggest a line has been crossed.

• Judge Arthur Engoron, who's presiding over Trump's civil fraud trial in New York, yesterday imposed a gag order on the defendant after he attacked Engoron's clerk online and posted a link to her Instagram account — while sitting in the same courtroom as her.

🔭 Zoom out: Political scientist Brian Klaas dubs it "the banality of crazy."

• Much of the public may be in the dark about Trump's darkening rhetoric, Klaas writes. But "the people most likely to be radicalized by him or to act on his incitement already hear him, loud and clear."

In speeches, interviews and on social media in recent weeks, Trump:

• Said former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley committed "treason" and suggested he be executed.
• Called for Judge Engoron to be disbarred, thrown out of office and criminally prosecuted.
• Labeled New York Attorney General Letitia James — who's suing Trump for fraudulently inflating his wealth and assets on financial records — a "racist" and "monster."
• Said special counsel Jack Smith — who's prosecuting Trump in the Jan. 6 and classified documents cases — is "deranged" and a "psycho" who "looks like a crackhead."
• Posted online, "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU!" — one day after swearing in federal court that he would not intimidate witnesses in the election interference case.
• Mocked Paul Pelosi after he was brutally assaulted by a home intruder who was searching for his wife, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
• Urged police to shoot shoplifters on sight.
• Said migrants illegally crossing into the U.S. are "poisoning the blood of our country."

The bottom line: Trump's courtroom debut this week provided a glimpse of whether he would tone down his rhetoric once his trials began. The early verdict is a resounding no.

• Keep reading.

House GOP sources tell me the two most likely candidates for speaker as of this morning are House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) and House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

• It might be tough for the conference to turn down Scalise, 57, if he goes all-in for the job: He was badly wounded in the shooting at a House GOP baseball practice in 2017, and was diagnosed this summer with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer. But the sources told me there are many questions about whether the grueling job suits Scalise right now.
• Jordan, 59, is a McCarthy loyalist and team player who has establishment ties — and was the founding chair of the hardline House Freedom Caucus. But it's unclear whether Jordan's hardcore conservative brand could fit the realities of governing.

🥊 Reality check: The GOP had no Plan B after Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) yesterday became the first speaker in House history to be removed.

• An outside GOP power broker texted me that it's more like a buffet of plans B to Q: "Some are crazy, all are speculation."

State of play: The House will return Tuesday, with a leadership election the next day.

• Party breakdown of final vote ... Go deeper: How Trump shadowed McCarthy, by Axios' Hans Nichols.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was ordered to move out of her office in the Capitol by Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) after he became acting speaker. (She keeps her regular space in a House office building.)

• Why it matters: Pelosi was a harsh critic of now-former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and McHenry is a close McCarthy ally, Axios' Andrew Solender writes.

In an email sent about an hour and a half after McCarthy was removed and McHenry became speaker pro tem, GOP aides on the House Administration Committee said:

• "The Speaker pro tempore is going to re-assign [Pelosi's hideaway] for speaker office use. Please vacate the space tomorrow, the room will be re-keyed."

Pelosi, who is in San Francisco for tomorrow's funeral of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (and thus missed the speaker-removal vote) said in a statement:

"This eviction is a sharp departure from tradition. As Speaker, I gave former Speaker Hastert a significantly larger suite of offices for as long as he wished. Office space doesn't matter to me, but it seems to be important to them."

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Entrepreneurs and tech giants are racing to deliver AI in new devices and gadgets — including smart glasses, pendants and pins — that they hope will challenge the smartphone, Axios chief tech correspondent Ina Fried writes.

• Why it matters: New hardware could find a niche even if the phone, which is all most users need to harness AI, remains the dominant device.

What's happening: Most entrants in the new AI hardware race work via voice input, foregoing the price and bulk of a large display.

• Humane: The startup, led by former Apple employee Imran Chaudhri, showed off its AI Pin on a Paris runway this week after previously teasing the device in a TED talk. The wearable uses a projector to allow its simple user interface to appear on a hand or other nearby surface.
• Rewind Pendant: Rewind.ai is showing off a $59 neck-worn pendant that's designed to record conversations and transfer them securely to a smartphone, creating a sort of searchable database of your life's soundtrack.
• Meta smart glasses: One of the biggest changes in the updated Ray-Ban models Meta announced last week is that users can converse with an AI chatbot through them.
• Tab: Due out next winter or spring, Tab is a smart wearable that "ingests the context" of your daily life by listening to all of your conversations, according to a video founder Avi Schiffmann posted on X.
• Jony Ive: Former lead Apple designer Jony Ive is said to be in talks with SoftBank and OpenAI regarding raising money for an AI hardware effort.

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The planet has shattered heat records in recent months. But even by the standards of a sizzling summer, September's temperature anomaly stands out, Axios extreme-weather expert Andrew Freedman writes.

• Why it matters: Following the hottest June through August on record, and the globe's hottest ever month in July, last month's preliminary data has astonished climate researchers.

🧮 By the numbers: In data from the Japan Meteorological Agency, September beat the previous hottest September by 0.5°C (0.9°F).

• Typically, monthly records are beaten by fractions of a degree — with such narrow margins that different climate centers around the world can rank them differently.

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Elon Musk told users of X, formerly Twitter, that the "best thing to do" in order to get engagement on his platform is to post long-form content, as "links don't get as much attention," Axios' Sara Fischer writes.

• Why it matters: Big brands and news companies have long relied on posting links to social media sites in order to build traffic to their own websites, where they can monetize user attention themselves.

Musk was reacting to that eye-popping chart in Axios AM yesterday: Clicks to top news sites from X and Meta have fallen off a cliff.

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Axios is hosting bi-coastal AI summits next month:

• Catch us in San Francisco on Nov. 8, and in D.C. on Nov. 28.

Request an invite to either location.

Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), appointed to fill the seat of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, was sworn in by Vice President Harris yesterday in the Old Senate Chamber at the U.S. Capitol.

• Butler's wife, Neneki Lee, held the Bible.

Butler is the third Black female senator. Harris was the second. The first was Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill.), who served in the 1990s.

• More about Butler.