Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is laying the groundwork for a 2028 presidential bid by leaning into his feud with Tucker Carlson — and staking out turf as a traditional, pro-interventionist Republican, Axios' Alex Isenstadt writes.

• Why it matters: By poking at Carlson's isolationist foreign policy views, accusing him of antisemitism and more, Cruz is putting himself on a collision course with Vice President JD Vance, a Carlson ally widely seen as the 2028 GOP frontrunner.

The senator is diving into issues that are tearing at President Trump's MAGA movement, namely ideological differences over Israel.

• "We have a responsibility to speak out even when it's uncomfortable," Cruz said in a statement to Axios. "When voices in our own movement push dangerous and misguided ideas, we can't look the other way. I won't hesitate to call out those who peddle destructive, vile rhetoric and threaten our principles and our future."

🥊 Carlson laughed off Cruz's gambit in a text message to Axios, calling it "hilarious."

• "Good luck," Carlson said. "That's my comment and heartfelt view."

🔎 Zoom in: Cruz has been going after Carlson relentlessly in recent weeks, including on his social media feed and in speeches before GOP donors and conservative activists.

• He appeared on Carlson's podcast in June and criticized the host over his opposition to Trump's missile strike on Iran's nuclear weapons facility. He also slammed Carlson over his criticism of Israel's campaign in Gaza and U.S. aid to help Ukraine in its war against Russia.
• "On foreign policy, Tucker has gone bat-crap crazy," Cruz said afterward. "He's gone off the rails."

In recent weeks, Cruz has accused Carlson of antisemitism, blasting him for conducting a friendly interview with white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.

• During a late October speech before the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), Cruz called Carlson a "coward" and "complicit in evil" for his conduct in the Fuentes interview.

🥊 Reality check: Many GOP donors will be queasy about crossing the Trump White House and embracing a candidate other than Vance.

• Vance — unlike Carlson — has aggressively disavowed Fuentes, calling him a "total loser." Fuentes has made racist comments about Vance's wife, Usha, who is Indian American.

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In a major reversal last night, President Trump said in a Truth Social post that House Republicans "should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it's time to move on from this Democrat Hoax."

• Why it matters: It's one of the few moments in Trump's second term where internal GOP pushback has forced his hand.

🖼️ The big picture: Trump's apparent change of heart indicates that the vote on releasing the Epstein files would likely pass, though it's unclear if it would come up for a vote in the Senate, Axios' Rebecca Falconer and Avery Lotz write.

• He has faced backlash from some in the MAGA movement and publicly split with former loyalist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).

📺 Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a leader of the quest to force a House vote on the files, predicted a "deluge of Republicans" could vote alongside him and Greene in defiance of the White House. "There could be 100 or more," he told ABC's Jonathan Karl on "This Week" yesterday.

• Trump announced his political divorce from Greene, whom he called "Wacky," a "ranting" lunatic and a "Traitor." Greene was one of a handful of Republicans who signed the discharge petition led by Massie and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) despite the president's opposition.
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⚡ Trump defended Tucker Carlson last night for his friendly interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes last week. Speaking to reporters planeside in West Palm Beach, Trump said:

• "We've had some great interviews with Tucker Carlson. But you can't tell him who to interview. I mean, if he wants to interview Nick Fuentes — I don't know much about him, but if he wants to do it, get the word out! Let him — you know, people have to decide. Ultimately, people have to decide."
• "Meeting people, talking to people — like for somebody like Tucker, that's what they do. Y'know, people are controversial — some are, some aren't."

👀 Steve Bannon, one of MAGA's most powerful online voices, texted me after the video posted on X: "POTUS buried lede — 'Get the Word Out' — he chose a side, watch the meltdown."

• Fuentes tweeted: "Thank you Mr. President!"

Watch the video of Trump on Carlson-Fuentes.

President Trump will dial up his affordability message for an audience of McDonald's owners, operators and suppliers this evening, as part of an escalating White House push to take on Americans' economic worries.

• "The Biden administration started the affordability crisis, but President Trump will end it so all Americans can achieve economic prosperity," a White House official told me.

Why it matters: The cost of living was a winning message for Democrats in off-year elections earlier this month. And Republicans see new urgency on the issue as they turn to next year's midterms.

During remarks at an Impact Summit hosted in Washington by McDonald's, Trump is expected to tout steps he has taken to support small businesses and job creators.

• He'll talk about the tax cuts in his One Big Beautiful Bill, which includes "No Tax on Tips ... No Tax on Overtime ... No Tax on Social Security."

Context: Trump has floated a variety of ideas for lowering the cost of living, while insisting he's taming "Biden's inflation crisis." The prices of some staples are up and polls show worry about the economy.

🍟 The backdrop: A key message at the McDonald's summit will be that value and affordability are "so important to consumers and elected officials [that] our franchisees and company are co-investing to bring extra value and affordability to our customers," an official told me.

• Go deeper.

American universities enrolled far fewer new international students this fall, Axios Boston's Steph Solis writes from preliminary data published by the Institute of International Education.

• Why it matters: In the first year of President Trump's second term, students have faced abrupt visa terminations, legal fights over their academic futures and, in some cases, arrest and detention by immigration agents over political speech.

🧮 By the numbers: A survey of 825 U.S. higher education institutions showed a 17% drop in international students matriculating in the fall for the first time.

• Total enrollment among international students fell 1%. Undergraduate enrollment actually increased 2%, but graduate enrollment fell 11%.

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Move over, large language models — the new frontier in AI is world models that can understand and simulate reality, Axios AI+ author Ina Fried writes.

• Machine learning veteran Yann LeCun, who has told colleagues he'll leave Meta in coming months, plans to launch a world model startup, The Wall Street Journal reported under the headline, "He's Been Right About AI for 40 Years. Now He Thinks Everyone Is Wrong."

Why it matters: Models that can navigate the way the world works are key to creating useful AI for everything from robotics to video games. For all the book smarts of LLMs — the models that power your favorite chatbots — they currently have little sense for how the real world works.

💡 How it works: Instead of predicting the next word, as a language model does, world models predict what will happen next in the world, modeling how things move, collide, fall, interact and persist over time.

• World models learn by watching videos and digesting simulation data and other spatial inputs, building internal representations of objects, scenes and physical dynamics.
• The goal is to create models that understand concepts like gravity, object permanence and cause-and-effect without having to be explicitly programmed on those topics.

🔬 Zoom in: Some of the biggest names in AI are working on world models.

• AI pioneer and Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li's company, World Labs, announced its first commercial release last week.
• Google and Meta are also developing world models, both for robotics and to make their video models more realistic.

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Axios 2028, our new weekly newsletter, launched last night with a deep dive into how Ezra Klein is flexing his newfound influence inside the Democratic Party.

• Every Sunday, Alex Thompson and Holly Otterbein will bring you the definitive guide to rising players and election intrigue. Sign up here.

New York Times columnist Ezra Klein isn't content with opining about the Democratic Party — he's positioned himself as a powerbroker inside it, including private briefings with top candidates, sources tell us.

• Why it matters: Klein's columnist-turned-operative role is raising concerns inside the Times and the Democratic Party, people familiar with the matter tell Axios.

Through his columns, a hit podcast, briefings with Democratic lawmakers and his bestselling book "Abundance" with Derek Thompson, Klein is helping to shape the party's strategies and policies during President Trump's second term.

• Klein has spoken privately this year to potential 2028 candidates, including former Vice President Harris, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, sources with knowledge of the conversations say.
• He's also spoken with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro; their teams have discussed Shapiro appearing on Klein's podcast. Keep reading.

Two more big stories from the newsletter:

1. 📺 Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — not California Gov. Gavin Newsom — had the most effective ad in California's recent Proposition 50 campaign, according to private research by the Democratic Party's main super PAC, Future Forward. Go deeper.
2. 👀 New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker railed against the Democratic Party and met privately with state lawmakers in New Hampshire on Friday, sounding a lot like a guy who's planning to run for president. Go deeper.

Join the insiders ... Read the first issue.

Walter Isaacson, the former media executive who has written a shelfful of magisterial biographies on Benjamin Franklin and other history-changers, will be out tomorrow with a wee, 67-page hardcover, "The Greatest Sentence Ever Written" — an optimistic exposition of the most famous sentence in the Declaration of Independence.

• The sentence in question: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

🖋️ "We all know this sentence almost by heart," Isaacson told me. "But I wanted to drill down so we can think about and appreciate what it really means."

• He said his editor at Simon & Schuster, editor-in-chief Priscilla Painton, and longtime agent Amanda "Binky" Urban seized on the idea that short books have become a format readers now love.

Isaacson said that as America approaches next year's 250th birthday celebrations, he wants to help reaffirm "the common ground we share as a nation, as embodied in the second sentence of the Declaration."

• Share this story… Get the book ... Isaacson interview for CBS News "Sunday Morning."

Ford's new high-tech headquarters, which officially opened yesterday in Dearborn, Mich., is double the size of its old one with room for twice as many employees.

• Ford World Headquarters — part of the larger Henry Ford II World Center campus, the company's first new HQ in 69 years — officially opened yesterday, three miles down the road from its home since 1956.

The 2.1 million-square-foot HQ will eventually house more than 14,000 employees within a seven-minute walk and another 9,000 within a nine-minute drive, AP reports.

• The HQ's "crown jewel" is a showroom like a "James Bond villain's lair," said Jennifer Kolstad, Ford's global design and brand director.

Keep reading ... More pics.