To President Trump's many roles, formal and self-designated, add a new one to the list: chairman of all boards, Axios managing editor for business Ben Berkowitz writes.

• Why it matters: The president has assumed a quasi-authority to orchestrate how the private sector operates, both broadly and down to the management and ownership of individual companies.

No one's stopping him. So he continues to confidently plow ahead.

• Those with insight into his strategy argue it's anything but arbitrary. There's a mold-breaking calculus at play, they say, centered on national security and American competitiveness.

🔎 Zoom in: The director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" yesterday that the government's new stake in Intel was a "down payment" on the creation of a sovereign wealth fund, adding it was "absolutely right" that Trump would seek more such investments.

• In other words, if you're a private company, you may soon be invited to sell a chunk of your business to the government, even at the cost of diluting existing shareholders.

There are plenty of other examples this year of Trump telling businesses how to do business:

• 💰 Chip companies that wanted to do business in China being ordered to hand over 15% of their revenue to get export licenses.
• 📲 Apple being squeezed for another $100 billion investment commitment to avoid huge tariffs for not making its phones in the U.S.
• 🏭 U.S. Steel having to hand over a golden share to Trump's personal control to reverse the rejection of its sale to Nippon Steel.
• ⚖️ Law firms being ordered to hand over free services to the government to avoid being pursued over their past work.

It's not just private industry — sports and entertainment businesses are also getting pushed around:

• 🏈 Trump threatened to derail the Washington Commanders' new stadium deal unless the team changed its name back to the Redskins.
• ⚾️ He demanded the Baseball Hall of Fame include Pete Rose, and more recently, Roger Clemens.
• 📺 ABC and NBC are being threatened with losing their various local broadcast licenses because Trump doesn't like their reporting on him.

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President Trump moved to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook last night, Axios Macro authors Courtenay Brown and Neil Irwin write.

• Why it matters: It's legally unclear if the president has that power. So Trump touched off a historic legal fight that threatens the central bank's political independence.

Trump cited Article II of the Constitution and the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 to tell Cook she was "removed" from her position, "effective immediately," according to a letter the White House rapid response team shared on X.

• Bill Pulte — the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who has been among the most outspoken among Trump officials about the Fed — alleged in a letter earlier this month that she "falsified bank documents and property records to acquire more favorable loan terms, potentially committing mortgage fraud."

🖼️ The big picture: Trump's action turns what has been a theoretical — that he might seek to test the limits of the law by firing Fed governors, rather than just pressuring them — into a reality.

• It has never happened before, so no one knows how any wrangling over the legality of firing Cook will play out, nor what it will mean for the Fed in the meantime.

The Federal Reserve Act allows the president to fire a Fed governor for cause, but it is unclear whether the fine details of years-old mortgage applications from before Cook became a governor are sufficient.

• Keep reading.

Above: The Trump administration has overseen a huge wave of high-profile military retirements and removals.

• In the past two weeks, that's included the Air Force's top general and the leaders of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Naval Special Warfare Command and Navy Reserve.

As bots take over the digital universe, humankind is figuring out ways to strike back, Axios managing editor for tech Scott Rosenberg writes.

• Why it matters: Right now, AI looks like an inevitable part of our lives, but not everyone is down with that program.

A small but widening circle of Big Tech critics, artists, philosophers, humanists — and some technologists, too — are devising their own playbooks for a human response to AI's rise.

The AI refuseniks are...

1. Rediscovering the "slow web" movement. They're prioritizing human interactions over bot dialogue. Instead of surfing endless feeds, they're finishing a handful of longer articles (and even books!).

2. Getting "spiky" to stand out in a world of bots by acting unpredictably, taking the paths that are least likely to be the consensus choice of an AI model trained on everyone's preferences.

• "To be a useful person in the age of AI, you have to have unique insights that AI doesn't really agree with," a rising senior at Alpha High School, an AI-first Austin school, told The New York Times.

3. Staying offline to dodge AI entirely. Robin Sloan — the science fiction/fantasy author who Wired recently dubbed "The Tech World's Greatest Living Novelist" — is one proponent of this move.

• Keep reading ... Read part one on the bot vs. bot future.

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Global investment in renewable energy projects hit a fresh record this year, but fell in the U.S., Axios' Ben Geman writes from BloombergNEF data.

• Why it matters: Trump 2.0's reversal of federal support is starting to show up in hard financing data.

🧮 By the numbers: U.S. spending fell by $20.5 billion, or 36%, from the second half of 2024 in what the firm calls a response to the U.S. presidential election.

• It was the steepest drop of any country.

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AI is dimming job prospects for less-experienced workers, according to a first-of-its-kind Stanford study.

• Why it matters: There's been significant anecdotal evidence of an AI-related slowdown in hiring for certain jobs. New data shows a real and measurable impact for entry-level workers, Axios' Ina Fried writes.

Using ADP payroll data, Stanford researchers found that employment for younger workers (ages 22–25) in AI-impacted jobs — like software development and customer support — has dropped by 16% since late 2022.

• What's notable is the speed with which the job impact has gone from theoretical to real and significant.
• "This is the fastest, broadest change that I've seen," economist and Stanford professor Erik Brynjolfsson told Axios, noting the only comparable shift was the one to remote work during the pandemic.

The other side: Older workers and those in other fields aren't seeing a measurable hit to job prospects.

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Vice President JD Vance will travel to La Crosse, Wis., on Thursday to speak at a steel fabricating facility about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's benefits for manufacturing, a source tells me.

• Why it matters: Vance, who grew up in the Rust Belt, is promoting President Trump's economic wins at a time when workers and companies fear tariffs could produce headwinds.

Vance, the most likely GOP presidential nominee in 2028, has also talked up the megabill in the swing states of Georgia, Pennsylvania and his native Ohio.

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Extreme weather is driving sky-high home insurance prices in some especially storm-prone parts of the country, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick writes from a new analysis by Bankrate.

• Why it matters: Climate change is supercharging extreme weather events like hurricanes, increasing the odds of losses and claims and driving up insurance premiums.

💰 Zoom in: The national average for annual home insurance premiums is up 9% since 2023, hitting $2,470 as of July.

• Nebraska ($6,425), Louisiana ($6,274) and Florida ($5,735) — all three vulnerable to extreme weather — are just some of the states with shockingly higher-than-average premiums.

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The Labrador retriever is the top dog breed in the U.S., Axios' Carly Mallenbaum writes from a U.S. News & World Report analysis.

The top 10:

1. Labrador retriever
2. Chihuahua
3. Golden retriever
4. American pit bull terrier
5. German shepherd
6. French bulldog
7. Goldendoodle
8. Shih tzu
9. Yorkshire terrier
10. Dachshund

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