Republicans long fantasized about a very different government: one run by a strong president indifferent to media pressure, empowered by a Republican Congress, backed by a conservative Supreme Court and lower court system, and free of administrative state handcuffs and hostile federal employees.

Why it matters: This dream — a true decades-long, unfolding nightmare for Democrats — is closer to reality than at any point in our lifetimes.

• If you're a Republican, you probably love this. If you're a Democrat, you probably loathe it. Either way, readers should be clear-eyed about the totality of sweeping change in governing power.

🖼️ The big picture: We're not arguing former President Trump will win, or that Republicans will hold control of the House, or flip the Senate. But all are plausible.

• If Trump wins and congressional Republicans run the table, the other components for the most powerful White House in history are set firmly in place, and increasingly in law.

So let's dig into each component of the Republican fantasy:

1. A strong president indifferent to pressure. Well, that's Trump. He has long held that his power in office is virtually unchecked. The Supreme Court just added another layer of protection. The Justices ruled in Trump v. U.S. that presidents enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within their core constitutional duties, and presumptive immunity for other official acts. It'll take years to sort out the elasticity of immunity — but it's wide.
2. A compliant, Republican-controlled Congress. It's a coin toss who wins the House and Senate this year — much like it has been throughout this era of a 50-50 America. The Senate looks promising for the GOP, thanks to a favorable map that has Democrats playing defense in deep-red West Virginia, Montana and Ohio, plus five swing states. The House is harder, mainly because there are lots more Republicans in Biden-won districts than vice versa.
3. A conservative Supreme Court. A 6-3 majority is significant, as the most recent decisions showed. It was the six Republican-appointed justices who expanded presidential power. The three Democrats warned of a looming monarchy.
4. A weakened administrative state. The Court, in a series of rulings but most notably the reversal of the Chevron decision, handed Republicans a massive triumph in a 40-year war to weaken independent agencies. It basically ruled that individual bureaucrats and independent agencies can no longer set the rules for business regulation.
5. Purge hostile federal employees. Right now, a lot of the nitty-gritty of governing is handled by full-time civil servants who aren't political appointees and often operate outside the full control of the president. But Trump has threatened to fire tens of thousands of these civil servants and replace them with pre-vetted loyalists.

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Former President Trump last week tried to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which is recruiting loyalists to help carry out radical plans to transform the U.S. government, Jim and Mike write.

• He claimed to "know nothing about Project 2025." Truth is, Project 2025 was largely written by his allies and encapsulates a lot of what he hopes to do — and how he might do it, longtime Trump officials tell us.

Between the lines: We've written extensively about Trump's plans to stretch the power of the presidency on everything from punishing critics to using the U.S. military for domestic action.

• But the biggest long-term victory for the conservative agenda (although not necessarily presidential power) is the Supreme Court's end to independent agencies or officials dictating everything from securities laws to toxin levels in food or water.
• It's not hyperbole to say this Supreme Court did more to weaken agencies and federal bureaucrats in a few days than previous courts did in decades.

🥊 Reality check: Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) — a leading thinker on the right who worked in President George W. Bush's White House and contributes to National Review — told us that if Republicans win it all in November, "the left in America will find itself in a weaker position at the national level than at any time in the past century or so."

• "Yet it's far from clear that the right will be in any place to meaningfully capitalize on that fact, or that it's likely to persist and bring an end to the back and forth of the partisan seesaw that has characterized the 21st century," he added. "Since the beginning of this century, both parties have interpreted each of their narrow and ephemeral election wins as ushering in a sustainable new era they will dominate. They have been wrong to think so every time ... An election between two 80-year-olds feels more like an ending than a beginning."

Democratic brakes: Ultimately, it's the president who decides how to use the power of government — whether to stretch or contain it.

• A big reason many Democrats are in a full panic is they worry a weakened President Biden could make this Republican fantasy come true by costing them the presidency, the Senate and the House — and any chance of changing the courts.

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The White House is bracing for a brutal — and potentially decisive — week, with signs of more congressional defectors, donor threats to stop writing checks and a stream of revelations about the 81-year-old president's limitations, Axios' Hans Nichols writes.

• Why it matters: For President Biden, it's likely going to get worse before it gets better.

Biden's best opportunity to prove his Democratic doubters wrong probably won't come until his NATO press conference on Thursday.

• On a call with House Minority Leader Jeffries yesterday, four senior House Democrats said they hoped Biden will end his campaign: Reps. Jerry Nadler (N.Y.), Joe Morelle (N.Y.), Adam Smith (Wash.) and Mark Takano (Calif.). They're the ranking members of the Judiciary, House Administration, Armed Services and Veterans Affairs committees, respectively.

🏛️ The intrigue: Biden might have bought some time after Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), decided not to hold a planned meeting with other Democrats to discuss Biden this evening. Instead, they'll hold the conversation during tomorrow's regular caucus lunch.

🥊 Biden's bracketing: The White House announced plans for Biden to travel to Texas and Nevada next week during the Republican convention, which opens in Milwaukee a week from today. He'll highlight what's right about America, including civil rights and unity.

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French voters rejected a far-right advance and unexpectedly handed a leftist coalition the most seats in parliament after yesterday's high-stakes snap election.

• Why it matters: The results represented a major setback for the far-right National Rally, which was pushed into third place after dominating the first round of voting last week.

No coalition won a majority of seats, plunging France into political turmoil weeks before the Paris Olympics.

• How the far-right lost ... Prime minister resigns.

A slew of Hollywood heavyweights are calling on President Biden to step aside following his disastrous debate performance, Axios' Sara Fischer writes.

• Why it matters: Several moguls feel deceived by the White House and top campaign officials for keeping Biden's age issues a secret while they promoted his candidacy and donated millions.

Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel (brother of Rahm) told journalist Tina Brown at the Aspen Ideas Festival that Biden shouldn't be running: "He and his cohorts have told us that he's [been] healthy for over a year."

• Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings called on Biden to step aside. He and his wife have donated millions over the past few years, including $1.5 million for Biden's 2020 campaign and $100,000 this cycle.
• IAC chairman Barry Diller told The Ankler that he and his wife, designer Diane von Fürstenberg, were no longer supporting Biden as the nominee.

📺 P.S. Biden's ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos drew 8.5 million viewers for its Friday-night network airing, exceeding expectations. Go deeper.

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A new kind of turf war is breaking out on the web: AI bots battling other AI bots to seize or defend stockpiles of data, the AI era's most valuable commodity.

Why it matters: AI makers hungry for more data to train their language models are grabbing everything they can, Axios' Scott Rosenberg writes.

Owners of information are increasingly fighting fire with fire by turning to AI-powered tools to protect intellectual property.

• Cloudflare, the infrastructure and security firm used by a huge number of websites, introduced a new service that protects clients' content from poaching by data-harvesting bots.

🔭 Zoom out: The bot vs. bot free-for-all is just the opening salvo of what's becoming an increasingly hot war in every realm: content moderation, cybersecurity, finance, medicine and the military.

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1. 🗳️ Exclusive: The Fox Nation streaming service is expected to announce a weekly program hosted by Kellyanne Conway, beginning this Thursday. A new episode of "Here's the Deal with Kellyanne Conway" will drop every Thursday morning in the run-up to the election. "To reflect the will of the voter," Conway tells me, "one must first respect the wish of the voter. We do, and intend to deliver incisive commentary, fascinating guests, a mix of humor and seriousness — and the occasional big reveal." First guests include Larry Kudlow and Michael LaRosa, a former Biden administration insider.
2. 🤖 Sam Altman and Arianna Huffington, in a joint op-ed for TIME, announce Thrive AI Health, which "the OpenAI Startup Fund and Thrive Global are jointly funding to build a customized, hyper-personalized AI health coach that will be available as a mobile app and also within Thrive Global's enterprise products." The Alice L. Walton Foundation is a strategic investor.
3. 🏛️ Bully Pulpit International starts a tax policy practice group to help brands, coalitions and philanthropies navigate next year's epic tax fight on the Hill. BPI's new group will be led by partner and public affairs lead Scott Mulhauser, who previously helped run the Senate Finance Committee, and managing director Adam Hodge, who brings experience from senior roles at Treasury and Ariel Investments.

NASCAR unveiled its first electric racecar — a $1.5 million prototype built by Chevrolet, Ford, Toyota and Swedish-Swiss tech company ABB, Axios Chicago's Carrie Shepherd writes.

• The car — which looks more like a crossover than a traditional race car — is "ideal for road courses and short oval tracks" with its regenerative brakes, NASCAR says.

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