Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have muscled their way back into AI's elite ranks, closing the gap on a new generation of Silicon Valley startups, Axios' Madison Mills and Zachary Basu write.

• Why it matters: Recent gains by tech giants SpaceX and Meta — long stuck in AI's second tier — are putting pressure on a hierarchy dominated by OpenAI and Anthropic.

Both companies released models this week with performance and pricing that would've been hard to imagine from either lab a year ago.

• SpaceX's Grok 4.6 scored essentially even with OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol Max and just behind Anthropic's Fable 5 Max on the closely watched Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
• Promising "something special," Musk said Grok 4.7 should arrive in three to four weeks and predicted it will "exceed all current models" after additional training on a massive trove of SpaceX data.
• Meta is trying to squeeze the frontier from below. Its new models deliver competitive performance at dramatically lower cost — including Muse Glimmer, an open-weight system small enough to run locally on a laptop.

🔬 Zoom in: As OpenAI and Anthropic pulled ahead, Musk and Zuckerberg answered with the full force of their empires — spending billions on talent, infrastructure and acquisitions.

• Zuckerberg overhauled Meta's AI effort after the disappointing launch of Llama 4, then invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI and brought aboard its CEO, Alexandr Wang, to lead the push.
• Musk went even further, folding xAI into SpaceX and agreeing to acquire Cursor for $60 billion — bringing massive computing power, proprietary SpaceX data and a fast-growing AI coding platform under one roof.

Between the lines: The AI race is starting to reward more than raw intelligence, as price becomes a decisive advantage for many users.

🥊 Reality check: Anthropic and OpenAI still hold pole position — with even more capable models waiting in the wings, including systems deemed too sensitive for public release.

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House Democrats who've comfortably held their seats for decades are suddenly finding the ground shifting beneath their feet as primary voters revolt against the party's old guard, Axios' Andrew Solender writes.

• Why it matters: An anti-establishment revolution has swept Democratic primaries this year and could drastically alter the makeup of the party caucus and Congress as a whole.

Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), a 14-termer, became the latest victim: The 78-year-old lost his primary by more than 20 points to 47-year-old former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin.

• Larson became a top target for the Democratic youth brigade after his highly publicized freeze-up during a House floor speech last year that he later said was due to a complex partial seizure.

🧮 By the numbers: Larson is one of seven House Democrats who've lost their primaries this year — five of whom are past retirement age.

• Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.), and Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) — ages 69, 71 and 71, respectively — all lost to younger challengers affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America.
• Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), 78, lost to 38-year-old freshman Rep. Christian Menefee (D-Texas) after the GOP's mid-decade redistricting put them in the same seat.
• These losses, along with the ouster of Reps. Julie Johnson (D-Texas) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), tie 2026 with 2012 as the worst year for Democratic incumbents in primaries in the 21st century.

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The New York Times' Maggie Haberman tells me 70% of President Trump's mindshare ("maybe plus or minus 5%") goes to his gilding, construction, renovation, renaming and tribute projects.

• "He is spending a huge amount of energy, mental and otherwise, on these renovation projects, beautification projects around Washington, and then monuments to self," Haberman told me for our "Behind the Curtain" video series. "[T]here is no precedent in U.S. history of a sitting president devising such endeavors in their own name."

Why it matters: That mental map by Haberman — co-author with Jonathan Swan of "Regime Change," which has sold 600,000 copies and yesterday hit seven weeks at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list — is a Rosetta Stone to what motivates and fascinates Trump.

• "What interests him are things that you can see and touch," she told me.

Haberman had earlier made the 70% estimate about Trump's mindshare during an interview with her Times colleague Ezra Klein, saying that it's "a legacy thing."

• Haberman and I worked together in the early years of Politico. Her relentless reporting has made the New York City native a top expert on how Trump thinks. So I asked her to unpack her eye-opening stat:

Haberman and Swan visited Trump in the Oval Office in March for an hourlong interview for the book, which is now in eight printings and is the nonfiction bestseller of the year. "It was very clear," Haberman recalled, "what his mind was on while we were there. And what it was not really on was the war," which he'd launched just over two weeks earlier.

• "He didn't really want to talk about that. He didn't really want to talk about policy specifics. He wanted to describe himself as winning. And he wanted to show us how he had remade Washington."

🏛️ "You would think that on the 17th day of the war that he would have maps of the Middle East or maps of troop deployments — who knows," Haberman continued. "He picks up these pictures, and [they're] of maple trees. And he says: 'I am choosing maple trees for the White House. I am good at picking trees.' I'm paraphrasing here, but that is pretty much what he said."

• "Under that were designs of the ballroom. And he starts talking to us about the columns and how some of the columns are evocative of Rome. And then on the other side, the columns are evocative of Athens. And he's happy that they are a little bit either wider or more spaced apart or both than the columns at the Supreme Court. And that was like the first 15 minutes of this hour that we had."

📱 Watch our interview.

Pollsters blew another high-stakes election: In Wisconsin, center-left David Crowley, behind 20 points in poll after poll, stunned socialist Francesca Hong in Tuesday's Democratic primary for governor, Axios' Holly Otterbein writes.

• The reasons for the miss became clear yesterday: Surveys a week before the primary captured only a hint of a roller coaster of a race in which Crowley was gaining fast and Hong was playing defense.

Two recent polls had Hong up by about 20 points over Crowley. But Crowley wound up winning by half a point (39.8% to 39.3%) in an upset that interrupted a run of primary wins by left-wing Democrats this spring.

• Former top Obama strategist David Axelrod told us: "Part of it is the old saw that we often say but rarely hear: Polling is a snapshot in time. A lot of the polls were taken too early to capture the movement."

🔎 Zoom in: The primary's final month was particularly chaotic. The party's establishment scrambled to stop Hong out of fear the state Assembly member was too far left to win in November.

• The last week of the campaign was dominated by the fallout from Hong struggling to explain to CNN why she'd once taken to social media to say "cancel Thanksgiving."

📺 Dan Pfeiffer, another former Obama adviser, noted on X and Substack that Hong — with little campaign money — didn't air TV ads during the campaign's stretch run to counter the attacks against her in the critical last few days before the primary.

• "Hong ran an inspirational grassroots campaign that mobilized people around key issues like data centers, but her failure to advertise in the final days probably cost her the election," Pfeiffer wrote.

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Karoline Leavitt, the youngest White House press secretary ever, will leave at the end of the month to spend more time with her young children.

• Trump said in the surprise announcement on Truth Social that Leavitt will become one of his top outside advisers and "an influential voice within the Republican Party" heading into the midterms.
• Leavitt, 28, said on X that being a mother and welcoming a new baby while serving as press secretary "has been the most rewarding yet challenging season of my life, to say the least."

🔎 Behind the scenes: Multiple White House sources tell Axios' Marc Caputo that Trump hasn't picked a replacement. "He's sad to see Karoline go, and he'll hold out hope she'll decide to stay," a senior administration official said. "But he's gonna enjoy the heck out of this process of picking someone."

• Separately, longtime Trump adviser Jason Miller has been spotted in the West Wing, working as a special government employee and advising the president on policy proposals and policy messaging for midterms.

🛢️ Power moves: Brittany Kelm, one of the White House's senior energy advisers, is leaving for Sable Offshore, a small oil company with a big political footprint. Kelm is slated to head up its D.C. office as a vice president of policy and commercial programs, Marc reports.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio isn't running for president — but his interview on "The Katie Miller Podcast" this week showcased why so many Republicans want him to, Axios' Marc Caputo writes.

• Why it matters: Miller's show is the Trump administration's go-to new-media outlet where officials talk at length about their personal opinions and lives in a friendly setting.

3 moments from the head-turning interview:

🛸 UFOs: Rubio nodded to the fact that Miller's husband, deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, has the portfolio overseeing UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena).

• Rubio said: "I don't know who it is. I don't know what it is. But there are things flying over our military installation, and they're not ours, and we should look into this."

🥩 RFK's diet: "This is a crazy diet," Rubio said. "He has to travel with coolers full of sauerkraut. I'm not going to travel the world with a cooler full of sauerkraut. It's ridiculous. I can't do it."

• Asked what Rubio eats, his wife replied, "Pop-Tarts."
• "No," he countered. "I don't eat Pop-Tarts every day. The Pop-Tart is one of the great American innovations in the history of the world."

🐈 Cats: Rubio said the family owns two goldendoodle dogs, and he made clear he's no fan of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's cat.

• "I never took Pete for a cat guy," Rubio said. "Oftentimes, I'll get home at night and the cat is just sitting on my porch, and just looks at me like: 'What are you doing here?' ... It's an arrogant cat."

More from the interview.

Asked which political party they trust more to bring down the cost of living, young Americans' top choice was neither (36%) — over Democrats (26%) or Republicans (22%), Axios' Margaret Talev writes from a new Axios-Generation Lab poll of 18- to 34-year-olds.

• "They're kind of thumbs-down on everything — how the president's doing, how the economy's doing, both political parties," said Generation Lab CEO Cyrus Beschloss. "AI is a pretty big disruptor. It's easy to point to one faceless thing as the cause."

More data from the poll on AI, 2028 contenders and socialism.

This chart shows the astonishing spike — a literal hockey stick! — in how much professional sports teams have sold for over the last few decades.

• The Los Angeles Lakers were sold yesterday to venture capitalist Josh Kushner and former Disney CEO Bob Iger at an astonishing $12.5 billion valuation — the most ever for a pro sports club.
• Billionaire Mark Walter reached a deal to buy the controlling stake just last June at a $10 billion valuation, meaning the team's value increased by $2.5 billion in 14 months.

Between the lines: The $12.5 billion sale is double the record price for an American sports franchise just three years ago, when the Washington Commanders sold for $6.1 billion.

• Go deeper: Dan Primack on the Lakers.