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Europe heat wave Extreme heat is gripping Europe as a powerful heat dome pushes temperatures to triple digits across much of the continent. Hundreds of records have already been shattered, with more expected as the heat intensifies today through Thursday. France, at the epicenter of the extreme conditions, also endured its hottest day on record Tuesday. Read more. THE SCIENCE: Here's what happens to your heart and brain in the heat

War powers In a rare bipartisan move, the Senate on Tuesday voted to limit President Trump's war powers by directing him to remove US military forces from the conflict in Iran. The measure sends a clear signal that many lawmakers remain uneasy about deeper US involvement. President Trump, meanwhile, called the vote "poorly timed and meaningless." Read more.

Housing affordability The dream of homeownership is slipping out of reach for many Americans as housing costs continue to outpace incomes. But relief may be on the way: Congress this week passed the largest housing affordability bill in a generation, designed to increase the number of homes on the market and remove some of the hurdles that have made them so expensive. Here's how it could affect you.

⚽ 1 for the road: World Cup scoring spree Data: Zafronix. Chart: Danielle Alberti/Axios The World Cup is producing goals at a pace not seen since 1958. Each match is averaging just over 3 goals so far — 23% more scoring than the same span of games in the last World Cup. AP pinpoints three factors driving the high-scoring games: ⚽ The ball: It's built with deep seams to produce "optimal in-flight stability." Players and coaches say it's flying at goalkeepers at high velocity. ⏱️ Longer games: New hydration breaks have led to more stoppage time, opening up extra scoring chances. 🌎 A bigger tournament: The expanded 48-team format, debuting this year, has widened the talent gap between teams. Go deeper.

📉 Tech stock slump Data: Financial Modeling Prep. Chart: Emily Peck/Axios Investors hit pause on the AI run-up, with chip stocks slumping from their record highs, Axios Markets author Emily Peck writes. Why it matters: We're in a bit of a reality-check moment in the AI buildout — both for businesses blowing their budgets on compute, and for investors bidding up stock prices for any company engaged in the new technology. The tech-focused Nasdaq 100 index slid 3.3% yesterday. The broader S&P 500 closed 1.4% lower, after a selloff in South Korea got investors skittish about the high-flying chip stocks. Keep reading.

Data: Pew Research Center. Chart: Danielle Alberti/Axios New polling shows America's standing abroad is sliding as the Trump administration threatens a wholesale reordering of the trans-Atlantic relationship, Axios' Mike Zapler and Josephine Walker write. Why it matters: Pew's findings, out yesterday, capture how allies increasingly view Washington as unreliable, self-interested and less committed to global cooperation. 🧮 By the numbers: A median of 76% of people across 36 countries have no confidence in Trump, according to Pew. About 57% view the U.S. unfavorably, and around 50% call it an unreliable partner. Among traditional allies, faith in the U.S. as a reliable partner has cratered since 2022 — down 52 points in Sweden, 48 in Canada and 47 in the Netherlands. More on the polling.

🎬 The Axios Show: Chamath's anti-doomer case AI investor and "All-In" Podcast co-host Chamath Palihapitiya tells Dan Primack on "The Axios Show" that an AI job apocalypse makes for an "incredible headline" but ignores how humans have adapted to past tech shocks. The Social Capital CEO rejected the idea that AI and robotics will wipe out work — even for plumbers. Palihapitiya asks who will run the plumbing business or the robotics company. Humans will still need shelter, food, clothing and, yes, bathrooms. Palihapitiya points to past technological transitions that let humans multiply the number of tasks they do in a day. "I suspect if you just trend it, that 35 things now goes to 300 things over the next thousand years," he said. "There's going to be more ways in which we allocate time." Watch the first clip.

🗽 Socialist earthquake in NYC Mamdani as kingmaker: House Democrats were stunned last night when two of their colleagues — including the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus — lost primaries to left-wing challengers backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Axios' Andrew Solender writes. Why it matters: The New York primary results are expected to double the Democratic Socialists of America bloc in Congress. Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) told us: "People who do not support the DSA wring their hands at cocktail parties, while the DSA is organizing." 🔎 Zoom in: Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) lost reelection in a 66% to 34% landslide to progressive former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), the Hispanic Caucus chair, lost his primary more narrowly to democratic socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier. In the race to succeed retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.), democratic socialist state Assemblywoman Claire Valdez scored a double-digit victory over the Brooklyn borough president. Between the lines: Mamdani backed all three winners: Lander, Avila Chevalier and Valdez. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) endorsed Espaillat and Goldman. Keep reading. 👉 The AI race: New York state Assemblyman Micah Lasher won a crowded Democratic primary for the Manhattan congressional seat left open by retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler, beating Alex Bores, a state assemblyman and former Palantir employee. Bores helped pass the nation's first major AI-safety law and ran on reining in the industry. The race drew more than $20 million in spending from AI interests. By the numbers: Lasher got 39% and Bores got 35%. Jack Schlossberg, a political novice and grandson of President John F. Kennedy, finished with only 11% of the vote (11,000 votes out of 102,000). Go deeper. 🗳️ More takeaways ... AP results from New York ... Maryland ... South Carolina ... Utah. Elections takeaways Americans across four states cast their votes Tuesday in primaries and runoffs ahead of the November midterm elections. In New York, all three candidates endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their House primaries, including two who defeated incumbents. The wins are being viewed as a sign of Mamdani's growing political influence and his emergence as a key power broker within the Democratic Party. Read more. WATCH: Candidate finds out he won his race while live on CNN

Global AI wars Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Stock: Getty Images Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen use this "Behind the Curtain" column to synthesize a flurry of news showing the U.S. faces rising AI competition across Asia and Europe: 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. Five Eyes, composed of the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, is considered the world's most comprehensive and powerful spy network. 🖼️ The big picture: President Trump told Marc Caputo on "The Axios Show" that "we're beating China by a lot" on AI. But that lead, which U.S. leaders and businesses have been banking on, is eroding. Three new disruptions show just how fast it's happening: It's becoming harder to put up a wall around America's advancements. Japan's Sakana AI launched Fugu Ultra, an orchestrator that it claims offers "frontier capability without the risk of export controls" by switching between publicly available models. The Tokyo-based company says it can reach Mythos-level performance by using U.S. labs' work as interchangeable infrastructure. China is eating away at that lead by stealing America's best work. In February, Anthropic accused DeepSeek, Minimax and Moonshot of illicitly training their own models via "distillation," using thousands of accounts to have millions of exchanges with Claude — a cheap shortcut to years of pricey research. American labs are wondering whether the frontier is worth the risk. Two weeks ago, the Commerce Department export-controlled Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5, leading the company to shut off access for everyone. The best domestic AI companies may be wary to show off their highest-capability models, fearing further government intervention. Between the lines: China's open-source models are gaining ground fast. Z.ai's GLM-5.2 is the buzziest right now. An LLM leaderboard by Artificial Analysis, a benchmarking company, puts GLM-5.2 alongside OpenAI's GPT-5.5, at about a fifth of the cost to run. When it comes to coding, Arena's web development ranking has the Chinese model second only to Fable — making it the best-performing model you can actually use right now. Alex Stamos, former Facebook chief security officer, told Axios Future of Cybersecurity's Sam Sabin that it's quite possible the Chinese "have things privately that are really, really good. [It] is arrogant and foolish of us to think that just because we're American that we've got the best stuff." He added that Chinese military hackers are likely "laughing hilariously right now at the Americans fighting between themselves and cutting each other off left and right." 🔭 Zoom out: It's Europe, too. Domyn — an AI company based in Milan, Italy — announced last week that its Europa project is a frontier open-source AI model that will support all 24 official languages of the European Union. Domyn (formerly iGenius, which was described as the Ferrari of AI) collaborated with Nvidia to build Colosseum, billed as Europe's largest AI supercomputer. 👀 What we're watching: The Five Eyes call to action said a "whole-of-society response is required" to respond to the accelerating cyber risk. "Boards and executives should ensure cyber resilience is in place and works under pressure," the bulletin says. "It is not enough to have controls. Leaders must be confident those controls will perform during a real incident. This requires reassessing long-standing trade-offs and using AI deliberately to strengthen defense — not just improve efficiency." The bottom line: America's AI lead is real but shrinking. Every move to protect it only hands rivals another reason to route around it — all while the capabilities that have Five Eyes on edge are already loose, downloadable and impossible to recall. Axios' Shane Savitsky and Sam Sabin contributed reporting.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY June 24 1997 U.S. Air Force reports on Roswell U.S. Air Force officials release a 231-page report dismissing long-standing claims of an alien spacecraft crash in Roswell, New Mexico, almost exactly 50 years earlier. read more Sponsored Content by REVCONTENT 1980s 1982 Garment workers’ strike begins in New York City’s Chinatown 21st Century 2021 98 people die in Surfside condo collapse Arts & Entertainment 2005 Tom Cruise raises eyebrows in “Today” show interview 1997 Disney pulls Insane Clown Posse album on release day Cold War 1948 Soviets blockade West Berlin Colonial America 1675 King Philip’s War begins Crime 1973 UpStairs Lounge arson attack 1993 Unabomber mail bomb injures Yale professor European History 1717 1st Masonic Grand Lodge formed in London 1812 Napoleon’s Grande Armée invades Russia Vietnam War 1970 Senate votes to repeal Gulf of Tonkin resolution

Airborne Ant Trap Researchers have identified a new Australian spider that catapults its prey into the air with an acceleration roughly 15 times greater than that experienced by jet pilots, according to a study published this week. A two-person team spent 10 nights in the rain forest recording the nocturnal species with high-speed and infrared cameras. The spider spends up to four hours spinning tension lines into a cone on a leaf, branch, or the forest floor. Researchers suspect it releases pheromones to lure green ants—the spider's only prey. When an ant bites the cone, the trap launches the insect nearly a foot into the air in a fraction of a second and into a primary web, where the spider feasts (watch infrared recording). The snare-like contraption is the first known web triggered by the prey rather than the predator and the first designed to target a single species. While the spider has yet to be formally named, it's been coined the ballista spider, after an ancient Roman weapon used to launch stones (watch how it works).

'Green Boots' Recovery Mission India’s government is soliciting bids for a mission to retrieve the remains of “Green Boots,” a climber who died 30 years ago on Mount Everest. See an image of “Green Boots” here (scroll and use the slider to reveal). In 1996, climbers attempted the first Indian ascent of Everest from the northeast side in Tibet. (Climbing from Nepal's south side is more common, accounting for about 70% of climbs.) Near the summit, the group was hit by the blizzard chronicled in Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air.” Eight people died, including three Indian climbers, of whom only one body has been found. Nicknamed for his lime-colored boots, the body remains on the trail, and DNA has confirmed he is Indian soldier Dorje Morup. India wants the retrieval completed by October, despite poor weather conditions. About 200 bodies remain on Mount Everest. Efforts to retrieve them are dangerous, although some—including “Sleeping Beauty”—have been moved out of sight.

Healthcare Fraud Sweep The Justice Department has charged 455 defendants across 45 states and US territories in a $6.5B healthcare fraud crackdown, which officials described as the largest coordinated enforcement action in its history and the second-largest amount ever charged in a single operation (behind last year’s $14.6B operation). Authorities say the schemes targeted Medicare, Medicaid, and other healthcare programs through fraudulent billing, illegal kickbacks, opioid distribution, and telemedicine operations. Those charged include 90 licensed medical professionals, while 295 defendants are tied to over $500M in false Medicaid claims. Investigators also seized more than $127M in cash, vehicles, jewelry, and other assets tied to the alleged fraud. The two-week crackdown comes amid the Trump administration’s antifraud push, with expanded data-sharing efforts across agencies (scroll to see coordinated effort). Experts estimate healthcare fraud costs the US between $100B and $170B annually—roughly 3% to 15% of total healthcare spending. See a dashboard tracking healthcare fraud cases nationwide.

🏞️ Paddlin' shot! Photo: Kale Williams/Axios Axios Portland's Kale Williams shares this serene pic from an afternoon paddleboarding on the Willamette River in Portland, Ore., last week: The beach at Sellwood Park was jammed as the hum of jet skis competed with the DJ pumping electronic tunes out over the river, Kale writes. The water was cold, but the vibes were just right.

It's unfortunate that this thread stopped being developed.

Covid vaccine study the acting CDC director blocked is published in an outside journal A study on Covid vaccines that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s acting director blocked from publication came out Tuesday in a different journal. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/study-covid-vaccines-acting-cdc-director-blocked-published-rcna351174? ps:Who would've guessed? Ha!! What a joke this administration is!! So pathetic!!!

Ro 5:10 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. 2Co 5:19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. The word "imputing" is also translated as "counted" and "reckon." Same word used in describing Abraham, "It was counted to him for righteousness." God does not count sin against us because Jesus died for us.

The LGBT consortium along with their sycophants definitely went after J.K. Rowling and I for one am glad she stuck to her guns!

💣 GOP powder keg Sens. Mike Lee and Rick Scott have teed up what could be a tense, confrontational lunch tomorrow with President Trump and Senate Republicans. The two spent months pressuring Senate Majority Leader John Thune on the SAVE America Act. Now Trump will be in the room with them. Why it matters: Trump is fixated on passing the SAVE Act to help Republicans in the midterms. But Thune is insistent that Republicans don't have the votes. "There are not the votes to nuke the filibuster, and there aren't going to be 10 Democrat votes to all of a sudden support the SAVE America Act," Thune told reporters today. SAVE would require voter ID and proof of citizenship, while imposing new restrictions on mail-in voting. Zoom in: Scott invited Trump to attend the weekly lunch put on by the conservative Senate GOP Steering Committee. Thune laughed when asked whether Scott checked with him before extending the invite. "Well, he told me he did it," Thune told reporters. Scott sent a letter to senators yesterday outlining what he thinks the chamber's focus should be — including passing the SAVE America Act or parts of it, according to a copy we obtained. Between the lines: Senate GOP leadership has largely learned to negotiate with and work around staunch conservatives like Lee and Scott. But some senators are losing patience. "I never speak ill of members when they want to be professional," Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told reporters today after accusing Lee of "naivete" or wanting "to get more likes on social media posts." "But when you do some of the bullshit [Lee has] done on social media, that's why he gets these comments out here," he added. "I think Mike Lee is contributing to this fantasy that somehow it's going to happen," Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters. The big picture: The SAVE Act got 48 votes earlier this month when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) tried adding it as an amendment to the budget reconciliation bill. Former GOP leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Tillis voted against it. The closest the GOP got was 53 votes for a narrower amendment requiring photo ID to vote. Three other amendments requiring IDs for registering to vote or requiring proof of citizenship failed to get more than 50 votes when they came up in April and June. "The will is not there, and the votes aren't there. ... I'm into reality," Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told us when asked about Lee and Scott's efforts. But Scott and Lee are publicly pushing leadership to use aggressive procedural tactics until the bill passes. "Let's pass the SAVE America Act now," Lee replied yesterday to a post from Thune's X account. "As I've been asking you to do for months, please bring it up now and announce that we will debate it until it passes." Thune retorted today: "Sometimes when something hasn't been done in 100 years there's a reason for that." — Stef Kight

‘This case is about justice’ A young California couple were running errands before their wedding when authorities say a deputy ran a red light and slammed into their car. Gavin Hinkley died, and his fiancée suffered severe injuries. A lawsuit seeks accountability.