Axios

President Trump is making life hell for Senate Republicans, and they're returning the favor.

• "I make no apologies for standing up to the president," Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) told reporters after he got into a shouting match with Trump on Wednesday at a Senate GOP lunch. "I made it clear that I wasn't going to be bullied."

Why it matters: Trump's push for a pre-midterm elections crackdown, via the SAVE Act, has opened of the deepest GOP ruptures of his second term.

President Trump's lunch with GOP senators devolved into a lengthy shouting match between him and outgoing Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.).

Why it matters: Trump's handling of the war in Iran and the Senate's passage of a war powers resolution consumed the conversation, despite Trump's renewed pressure to pass a voter ID bill and kill the filibuster.

Candidates pushing for AI safety regulation were far from silenced following Tuesday's primaries.

Why it matters: AI money is now a significant part of the election landscape.

President Trump cancelled Wednesday's planned signing of a landmark bipartisan housing bill, demanding Congress pass the unrelated SAVE America Act first.

Why it matters: Trump has been angling for Congress to pass the voting bill for months, and previously threatened to withhold his signature on any other legislation until lawmakers passed it.

In a speech in New York on Tuesday night, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that a long-running bet on cheaper goods and deeper economic integration making America richer and safer had failed.

Why it matters: The speech set a framework for President Trump's economic policies since his second term, including tariffs and calls for reshoring.

• But it also suggests that those policies may be part of a broader rethinking of globalization that extends well beyond one administration.
• If that's right, investors betting on a return to the old globalization playbook may be waiting a long time.

Back in 2001, most Americans thought the Founding Fathers would be pleased with how our country turned out.

• Today, fewer than one in five agree, according to a recent poll.

Why it matters: Few things unite Americans in its 250th year like their shared conviction — across party, age, race and income — that the country has let its founders down.

Here are early conclusions and things to watch in the Energy Department's plan to loan utilities billions of dollars to buy equipment for large new reactors.

Why it matters: DOE envisions 10 Westinghouse AP100 reactors — enough to power about 10 million homes — under construction across five two-reactor projects by 2030.

President Trump says he ordered the Justice Department to probe whether oil companies are gouging consumers.

Why it matters: It shows a new level of Trump's frustration with prices at the pump — and introduces a new wild card for oil companies, depending on what the Justice Department decides to do with the president's overnight Truth Social post.

Lockheed Martin plans to flight test an in-development, extreme-range cruise missile with the U.S. Air Force by the end of the year.

The big picture: Lockheed first teased the AGM-158 XR in late 2024. The world's largest defense contractor by revenue now says it's part of a bigger push into customizability.

• "We're going to evolve that platform, AGM-158, into more of a modular system," Tim Cahill, Lockheed's missiles and fire control president, told Axios on the sidelines of ReIndustrialize in Detroit.

What looked like a typical round of President Trump insulting European leaders last weekend could turn into a wholesale reordering of the trans-Atlantic relationship.

Why it matters: Administration officials are pointing to Europe's reluctance to get involved in Iran to question why the U.S. should continue underwriting its defense.

• Against that backdrop, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is due in Washington tomorrow for what may be the alliance's most consequential encounter with Trump since his return to office.

The Five Eyes intelligence alliance issued a rare joint warning this week that frontier AI capable of crippling governments and businesses is close. The fast rise of Chinese and Japanese models helps explain the urgency and fear, officials tell us.

Why it matters: Yes, Anthropic's Mythos model is the most cyber-lethal threat in the world. But OpenAI is close here in America. And China and Japan, using much cheaper models, have gotten closer, faster than intelligence agencies anticipated.

• "The timeline is not years, it is months," Five Eyes warned.

Congress is running out of opportunities to pass major kids' online safety and AI legislation this year.

Why it matters: The effort to pair kids' online safety legislation with federal pre-emption of some state AI laws is running into resistance from lawmakers, advocates and administration officials with very different priorities.

House Democrats were left stunned on Tuesday night after two of their colleagues — including the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus — lost primaries to left-wing challengers.

Why it matters: The New York primary results are poised to double the bloc of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in Congress, something that is not sitting well with some moderates.

Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) lost his primary Tuesday to democratic socialist challenger Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Associated Press projects.

Why it matters: It's a major blow to the Democratic Party establishment and underscores the liberal grassroots' growing frustration with party leaders.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) was unseated in his Democratic primary Tuesday night by former New York City comptroller Brad Lander, according to the Associated Press.

Why it matters: Lander's victory — fueled in part by support from New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani — represents the latest in a string of victories for the left in Democratic congressional primaries.

With rare bipartisan support, the House passed a housing bill Tuesday evening that aims to address the shortage of affordable homes in the U.S.

Why it matters: The bill, the Road to Housing Act, shows that the housing crisis is something both parties actually agree needs to be addressed, even as it is unlikely to bring much short-term relief for homebuyers.