The role of government power is one of the biggest issues where Democrats and Republicans are drifting further and further apart, Axios' Caitlin Owens writes from Gallup polling out today.

• Why it matters: Others are immigration, climate and guns — all topics where any kind of consensus looks ever more elusive.

🧮 By the numbers: In 2003, there was an 11-point difference in the percentage of Republicans and Democrats who said immigration should be decreased. That gap in 2023 is 40 points.

• Republicans have become less worried about global warming over the last 20 years, while Democrats have become significantly more worried.
• Republicans were slightly less likely than Democrats to say that the federal government had too much power in 2003, in the aftermath of 9/11. But now, nearly three-quarters of Republicans agree with that statement, versus only 31% of Democrats.
• The percentage of Republicans who say abortion should be legal under any circumstance has stayed about the same since 2003, while the share of Democrats who hold that view has shot up from 32% to 59%.

🔎 Between the lines: In some cases — at least over the last decade — the parties' opinions have moved in the same direction, albeit often at different paces and from much different starting positions.

• The number of Republicans who said the government should ensure everyone has health care plunged between 2003 and 2013, which was right after the passage of the Affordable Care Act. It's crept back up since then, but there's still a 55-point gap between the parties.
• A similar trend occurred among Republicans who said gun laws should be stricter.

Both parties have lost confidence in the police — although the drop is much more drastic among Democrats.

• Explore the data.

The global heat wave, deadly floods across China's grain belt — plus wildfires on several continents — show how climate change is disrupting many of Earth's most-consumed crops, Axios' Ayurella Horn-Muller writes.

🖼️ The big picture: Corn, wheat and rice make up a huge part of the human diet, accounting for roughly 42% of the world's food calories.

• Corn yield will decrease worldwide under global warming by 3.6°F, according to a 2022 Scientific Reports paper.
• Rice production in India, the world's largest rice exporter, has been constrained by droughts and heavy rains.

"It's pretty much every summer now that a record-breaking heatwave is happening — not just in one breadbasket, but multiple breadbaskets around the world," says Corey Lesk, a Dartmouth College climate scientist.

• "We are currently heading into a climate regime that we have never seen before."

Read on.

1. 🩸 More gay and bisexual men will be able to donate blood starting today, as the Red Cross implements a historic rule change approved by federal authorities earlier this year. Go deeper.
2. Tou Thao, the last former Minneapolis police officer convicted in state court in connection with the killing of George Floyd, was sentenced Monday to 4 years and 9 months. Go deeper.
3. 🎵 A mint condition, first-generation iPod — originally purchased for $399 in 2001 — sold for $29,000 at an auction. It's an example of a new appetite for nostalgia that has fueled a collective bubble in goods from a bygone era — like Game Boys and vintage Polaroid cameras. Read on.

The world's next Holocaust museum is being built inside one of the planet's most popular video games, Fortnite.

• The virtual building, called the Voices of the Forgotten Museum, will let players walk its halls to read plaques describing the genocide against Jews in Nazi Germany, Axios' Stephen Totilo writes.
• They'll also see photos of resistance fighters and heroes who sheltered Jews.

"I feel a responsibility to make sure those who died are still remembered," independent game designer Luc Bernard, who has been building the virtual museum with a colleague, tells Axios.

• "It's time to adapt," he says. "Millions of dollars are being put into museums which I believe are important, but we are ignoring most of the population, and even worldwide."

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