Layoffs are falling. But where companies are cutting, AI is driving a greater share of the downsizing, Axios' Ben Berkowitz and Avery Lotz write from a Challenger, Gray & Christmas report out today.

🤖 Stunning stat: Just this year, AI has been blamed for nearly 102,000 job cuts.

• Since 2023, when AI was first tracked as a distinct reason, it's been cited in more than 173,000 job cut announcements, per the report.

"AI is the dominant force as companies are restructuring around it, automating roles, and reallocating budgets toward new capabilities," the firm's Andy Challenger wrote.

By the numbers: U.S.-based employers announced 45,849 job cuts in June, down 53% from the 97,006 cuts announced in May.

• Through June, employers have announced 443,604 job cuts, down 40% from the 744,308 announced in the first half of 2025, when the Trump administration oversaw a massive federal firing spree.

🔎 Tech again led all sectors, now accounting for nearly a third of all job cuts announced this year.

• 💡 "The sector is being reshaped in real time," Challenger said.

Read the report.

🎬 Watch the interview.

New York Times reporter Jonathan Swan believes President Trump wants to be remembered as "the singular historical figure of our time," Swan tells Axios CEO Jim VandeHei in a new episode of "Behind the Curtain."

• That's how Trump is governing in this second term, the "Regime Change" co-author says.

💪 Trump has framed his power as limitless, going as far as to compare his strength to figures like Napoleon, Stalin and Hitler in a scene in Swan's new book, co-written with The Times' Maggie Haberman.

• Those historical leaders' morals weren't the point of the president showing off the list, Swan notes: "It was just an expression of raw power."
• But when a president's North Star is envisioning himself in the lineage of the world's most powerful, "considerations about short-term domestic politics just melt away, and they become just almost irrelevancies."

That's shaped a vision of hemispheric dominance. Swan says:

• 🇻🇪 Trump sees Venezuela "as an oil field."
• 🇬🇱 He believes Greenland "should be American."
• 🇨🇦 And he's "absolutely" serious about wanting Canada.

Between the lines: Trump is surrounded by a more secretive, less skeptical circle of advisers than he was during his first term.

• "We're living in a country that's being run by essentially six people and Donald Trump, and it's a very closed ecosystem," Swan says.
• And POTUS "really doesn't hear a whole lot of criticism, skepticism, pushback."

🚀 Stunning sales: Simon & Schuster says "Regime Change" sold more than 300,000 copies across all formats in Week 1 — the biggest debut of any hardcover nonfiction book this year.

• "The book, which almost instantly sold out at stores across the country and on Amazon, has gone into its third printing since publication," the publisher said. That brings "the number of hardcover copies in print to an astounding 360,000, with potentially more reprints to follow."

📱 "Behind the Curtain" video ... Get the book.

1. ✈️ President Trump took flight today on his new Air Force One: a Boeing 747-8 given to the U.S. by the Qatari government. He told reporters ahead of takeoff: "This was a gift from a country that's treated us very well." How Trump got a "palace in the sky."
2. 🇺🇸 The White House will not renew the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. The administration is setting up years of annual reviews that bring fresh uncertainty for businesses that depend on trade with two of America's largest trading partners. Go deeper.
3. 🌐 A new UN-backed commission will gather top tech executives and heads of state to forge global AI solutions. The AI for Good Global Commission will hold its first meeting on July 8 in Geneva, Axios' Ashley Gold first reported.
4. ⚡ It's "alive"?? University of Minnesota researchers have achieved a breakthrough in biological engineering: the first synthetic cell that replicates a biological cell's life cycle, built entirely from non-living chemical components. Gift link.

PlayStation physical game discs will be a thing of the past by 2028, the gaming giant announced today.

• 💿 Physical media, like cartridges and discs, ruled gaming for generations until digital stores allowed people to download games, Axios' Herb Scribner reports.

🥊 Eliminating physical discs will lower production costs — a small reprieve for an industry rife with layoffs and developmental challenges.

• Today's announcement states that all "new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only."
• This won't affect games that are already released or will be releasing prior to January 2028.

🎮 Farewell to scratched disc frustration!

• Go deeper.