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🍔 1 for the road: Big Mac Index hits 40 Cover: The Economist The Big Mac Index — a clever project from The Economist that compares prices of McDonald's burgers in different countries — is turning 40. The index was created in 1986 as a thought experiment and has remained a semi-serious fixture for the magazine. 💡 How it works: McDonald's makes the Big Mac in a near-identical way everywhere, so its price acts as a rough gauge of whether a currency is undervalued or overvalued. Right now, the index shows the euro is overvalued against the dollar, while China's yuan and Japan's yen are undervalued. Interactive explainer ($).

🦾 Charted: Microsoft's $450 billion jump Data: FactSet. Chart: Matt Phillips/Axios Microsoft's surge in market cap yesterday — $450 billion — was apparently the biggest one-day gain in stock market history, according to a Bloomberg analysis. The company's stock rose 16% after its latest earnings report showed strong growth from its Azure cloud computing business — a sign that AI investments are paying off, Axios' Emily Peck writes.

💵 New data: What CEOs can't ignore Data: Brunswick Group and Echelon Insights. Chart: Sara Wise/Axios CEOs face an increasingly skeptical American public that's laser-focused on affordability and fairness, Axios' Shane Savitsky writes from polling by the Brunswick Group and Echelon Insights, provided first to Axios. 41% of Americans surveyed said a topic linked to affordability (cost of living, the economy, jobs) is the biggest issue facing the country right now. Asked what they'd tell CEOs about life in America today, a quarter of respondents pointed to high costs. 23% cited greed or inequality. Full results ..

🗳️ Exclusive: Tracking online voter registration Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Stock: Getty Images The Trump administration has a new tactic for trying to isolate cases of alleged voter fraud — digging into the IP addresses of those who went online to register to vote, Axios' Brittany Gibson writes. The FBI recently obtained the IP address of someone who registered online in South Carolina, according to documents first shared with Axios. Why it matters: The bureau's request for the address, which state and local officials complied with, offers a glimpse of how federal authorities are stepping up their probe of voter rolls and registration practices under pressure from President Trump. It's unclear how often the FBI plans to take the extraordinary step of seeking IP addresses. But its push in South Carolina has broad implications nationwide: 43 states allow some form of online voter registration. An IP address would show a user's geographic location and service provider, but not their specific identity. It could tell whether the user was outside a state or even the U.S., for example. The big picture: As the bureau investigates South Carolina, ICE has been requesting voter data in Texas and North Carolina. The Justice Department, meanwhile, is trying to obtain voter rolls from states that have resisted sharing registration information, and is suing 30 states and D.C. for that access. Keep reading.

📉 Trump's second-term low Data: Silver Bulletin. Chart: Noah Bressner/Axios President Trump's net approval rating slipped to the lowest level of his second term yesterday, according to data from Nate Silver. ⛽ Trump's ratings improved earlier this month before dipping again over the last couple of weeks — a decline Silver notes coincides closely with rising gas prices and the resumption of the Iran war. The president's latest numbers: 38.2% approve and 58.8% disapprove, for a -20.6% net approval rating. More numbers.

🤖 Digital world disruption Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios Axios CEO Jim VandeHei writes in his weekly C-Suite newsletter: The way information shows up online is changing lightning fast, starting with the total collapse of Google Search as we know it. Why it matters: Google has basically stopped sending people to websites (including our site) for answers and information. Instead, it's using AI to answer them on its platform, in its words. 🧮 By the numbers: Chartbeat data shared with Axios shows Google Search traffic to publishers fell 34% over the past year. That pain is regressive. Over the past two years, small publishers lost 60% of referrals from search overall, medium publishers 47%, large publishers 22%. At the same time, LinkedIn, Reddit and other massive platforms are getting jammed with AI-created content, making it harder to stand out — or decipher real from fake. Substack announced a partnership with AI-detection software Pangram, specifically calling out LinkedIn while arguing that "platforms that reward fakeness will create a race to the bottom." 👓 What we're watching: Online businesses are already anticipating the shift to an LLM, ChatGPT-like world. It starts with GEO (generative engine optimization) — the term for shaping how content shows up inside LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT. This is the modern version of SEO. It's early, and it's a black box.

⚠️ Anthropic's AI breach Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios Some of Anthropic's most powerful models — including Mythos 5 and an internal research model — gained unauthorized access to real-world systems during pre-deployment cybersecurity testing, Axios' Sam Sabin writes. Why it matters: Anthropic's disclosure — a little over a week after OpenAI first revealed similar testing incidents — fuels concerns about what the world's most powerful AI models will do when guardrails come off. Anthropic said in a blog post that three of its models compromised real-world systems belonging to three organizations after a misunderstanding between the company and one of its testing partners left the evaluation environment connected to the internet. The incidents — which involved Opus 4.7, Mythos 5 and an internal research model not intended for general release — happened during evaluations run with a third-party testing partner. Anthropic reviewed more than 141,000 cybersecurity evaluation runs after OpenAI disclosed that several of its models accessed Hugging Face, a widely used platform for hosting AI models, during testing. 🔬 Between the lines: Unlike OpenAI's incident, Anthropic said its models did not exploit a zero-day vulnerability to gain internet access. Instead, internet access was available because of the testing environment's configuration. Similar to the OpenAI case, Anthropic was evaluating its models without the additional safeguards it deploys on publicly available models. Those guardrails would have blocked these behaviors, Anthropic said in its report. Anthropic explains: Incidents 1-3 ...

US stocks rise to finish a wild July as Amazon soars, Apple sinks and inflation worries worsen NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks rose Friday to finish a wild July for Wall Street as Amazon leaped, Apple sank and rising oil prices worsened worries about inflation staying high. https://apnews.com/article/stock-markets-rates-korea-ai-oil-e31b3a442bcb957a53f1823ef21e73e8?

Hanna-Barbera pitched The Flintstones to networks for 8 weeks before it was finally picked up. It became the first-ever animated show to air during primetime. James

🏞️ Parting shot! Photo: Matt Lasure Speaking of otherworldly ... Reader Matt Lasure of Saint Paul, Minn., shares a "Best National Park" submission: "One of my favorite pictures, showing the alien landscape of Badlands National Park [in South Dakota]. Taken on a family trip in July 2022."

A No-Win Situation View in browser Back in April, Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, wrote an op-ed celebrating the Trump administration’s efforts to get Americans off food stamps. Officially known as SNAP, the program has shed an estimated 6 million participants since Donald Trump’s return to office—a shift that Rollins argued could help break a “vicious cycle” of government dependence. The idea that too many people have come to rely on federal handouts has long been a line of attack against SNAP. Per the Department of Agriculture’s preliminary data from April, about 37 million low- and no-income people in the United States are on food stamps. That’s roughly one in 10 Americans, down from one in eight last year. The reduction is in line with the administration’s broader approach to social welfare. Last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump has touted as one of his signature policy achievements, slashed funding to Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. And its cuts to SNAP—tightening eligibility requirements and limiting the amount of aid that recipients might be able to collect in the future—were the largest in the program’s history. Food stamps will lose $186 billion in federal funding through 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates. But what Rollins has framed as a way to curtail waste, fraud, and abuse is already having far-reaching impacts on the Americans who rely on the program. Last week, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank, suggested that “it’s very likely that the number of children receiving SNAP has dropped by more than 1.5 million since July 2025,” when the OBBBA became law. Inflation has been rising quickly this year, in part because of the Iran war, and the assault on food stamps is now compounding an ongoing affordability crisis. If states can’t meet the federal government’s new requirements for SNAP, they may have to take on a collective $9 billion in food-stamp costs themselves—forcing local legislators to make hard choices about which kinds of social-welfare programs, and which kinds of people, should receive aid. This past winter, when the White House decided to briefly stop funding SNAP during the government shutdown, Trump said that the program’s enrollment number was “many times what it should be.” It’s true that food-stamp enrollment—which tends to rise during moments of economic crisis and contract in moments of recovery—spiked substantially during the coronavirus pandemic as Congress temporarily increased benefit amounts, and enrollment still hasn’t reverted to its pre-2020 level. But stricter work requirements (homeless people and veterans are no longer exempt, for example) and reductions in federal funding have helped drive down SNAP enrollment at a vertiginous moment. Most people, whether on food stamps or not, are cutting back on groceries. And no other institution “is going to swoop in and provide these financial resources” to families struggling to buy groceries, Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, told me. In Arizona, the number of people with access to SNAP benefits has almost halved in less than a year—the biggest drop in any state. A recent New York Times report explains that the OBBBA’s cuts and updated rules have created “bureaucratic chaos” in the state, which has been exacerbated by a labyrinthian paperwork process and antiquated tech infrastructure. The fact that Arizona laid off a third of its caseworkers after losing a federal grant has also made it harder to verify who is and isn’t eligible for aid—and monthly visits to food banks have outpaced SNAP enrollment in the state for the first time, according to the Times. States have historically managed SNAP payments on their own; the federal government supplies the money for benefits and for some of the administrative costs. Critics of this arrangement have noted that the post-COVID swell in enrollments has coincided with an uptick in improper payments, most of which have historically been overpayments. In 2019, 7.4 percent of the payments SNAP doled out were made in error, according to the USDA; last year, the national error rate was 10.6 percent. The OBBBA puts states in a tough spot. When it went into effect, it gave most states until the end of September 2026 to get their error rates below 6 percent—a little more than a year. If they fail to do so, they will begin sharing the cost of food-stamp benefits with the White House in 2027 (Alaska and other states with higher error rates will have longer deadlines). The consequences will affect red and blue states alike, unlike some other Trump-backed economic initiatives. According to data released by the USDA last month, 41 states had error rates above the threshold in the 2025 fiscal year, and many are now scrambling to get those numbers down. California could end up paying roughly $1.9 billion if legislators don’t find a way to reduce the state’s rate by almost half, and Florida may need to pay $900 million, according to one estimate. Taking on those costs would require states to radically reshape their budgets, raise taxes, or find some other way to pay for SNAP—otherwise, their constituents may hold them accountable when the food-stamp payments stop coming. Officials in Alabama and Arizona have already considered ending the program, and, in an anonymous survey, four states identified “withdrawing and/or pausing from SNAP” as a potential risk. If states are able to lower their error rates, SNAP could be transformed for the better. But if they fail to do so by the fast-approaching deadline, it’s hard to see who wins: not food-stamp recipients, not the states that will have their budgets upended, and not the administration, which has been trying to convince Americans ahead of the midterms that it’s responding to their affordability concerns. Rollins has described SNAP as a “broken program,” but these changes aren’t guaranteed to restore trust in the system. Instead, the push to repair SNAP could end up breaking it even more. Related: The deadline for a major shutdown casualty The new food-stamp rules will make your head spin.

📔 Trump's Senate playbook President Trump has three go-to moves for GOP senators who frustrate him: persuade them when he can, ignore them when he must and bully them at will. Why it matters: The approach doesn't always produce results. But it almost always provides drama. 🥕 Persuade: Trump dispatched two top deputies to the Senate GOP lunch yesterday to make the case, in person, for a third reconciliation bill with elements of the SAVE Act. Then he sent in the big guns. Chief of Staff Susie Wiles huddled with the Senate GOP leaders shortly after their lunch. When Trump faced a Senate rebuke over the Iran conflict last month, the White House aggressively lobbied wavering Republicans to flip their votes. Ignore: Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche doesn't need Senate confirmation to do the job, Trump declared on Truth Social today. He can serve as acting attorney general indefinitely. Problem solved. 🥊 Bully: Trump began the week by demanding that Majority Leader John Thune scrap the filibuster and pass the SAVE Act. "Remember, stupidity always brings LOSING & DEATH!" Trump wrote. 👀 What we're watching: Bullying appeared to be Trump's preferred tactic this week. By yesterday, he was openly questioning whether Thune should remain majority leader. Thune's best defense was to downplay his own powers. 🪄 "He thinks I can wave the magic wand," Thune told Politico. "I wish it were that easy." Trump's penchant for bullying has emboldened some senators to stand their ground — such as John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who have blocked Blanche's nomination. Both will be out of the Senate in January. 🔎 Zoom in: Trump's anger with the Senate keeps flaring, despite Thune's success in rapidly confirming his nominees. With Jay Clayton's confirmation as director of national intelligence, the GOP-led Senate has confirmed 515 of Trump's nominees — with another batch of 74 on the way. 👟 That's a faster pace than the first administration and leaves only a handful of civilian nominations remaining on the Executive Calendar. Trump now has the authority to install many of the remaining nominees in acting roles across the federal government. 🌎 Zoom out: With one week left before the August recess, Senate Republican vibes are going from bad to worse. New polls show Americans continuing to sour on the GOP. The MAGA base is still enraged over the SAVE Act. Everything from the NDAA to crypto legislation is hitting roadblocks. And Trump doesn't appear interested in easing the pressure on his own party. The bottom line: Trump reserves the right to toggle among his three approaches, depending on his needs and mood. And while he can ignore the Senate on some personnel, he can't ignore it on legislation. He still needs 50 votes — or, in some cases, 60. "When crazy becomes the norm, it feels pretty routine," one GOP senator told us. — Hans Nichols and Stef W. Kight

How long can it take to become a US citizen? For some immigrants, becoming a US citizen takes a few years. For others, limited visa availability and annual country caps mean waiting decades before even applying. https://usafacts.org/articles/how-long-can-it-take-to-become-a-us-citizen/?

Senate committee advances nomination of Dr. Erica Schwartz to be Trump's CDC director A Senate committee on Thursday advanced Dr. Erica Schwartz’s nomination to be director of the nation’s top public health agency, setting aside concerns that she will not stand up to political meddling. Read More. 🍳 Big four get panned Data: CNN/SSRS poll; Chart: Kathleen Hunter/Axios None of Congress' top four leaders came close to breaking even on their net favorability ratings in a new poll, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer lodging by far the most negative reviews. 😡 Why it matters: Schumer could face pressure to step down as leader after the November midterms amid criticism from the party's progressive base. 44% of respondents in the CNN/SSRS poll said they held an unfavorable opinion of Schumer, with 15% reporting a favorable opinion. In January 2017, it was an even split: 25% of poll respondents had a favorable view of Schumer and 25% an unfavorable one. 🚗 Driving the news: House Speaker Mike Johnson, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Thune also have seen their unfavorables trend upward in the CNN/SSRS poll. While Johnson's net favorability was up five percentage points since March, it's down nine percentage points from January 2025. Almost two-thirds of respondents — 63% — said they either had no opinion of or had not heard of Thune, while 52% said the same about Jeffries. That's higher than for Johnson and Schumer. 🤔 The intrigue: Former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) remains even less popular than the four current leaders. More than half of respondents, 53%, said they held an unfavorable view of McConnell, who has been absent from the Senate since mid-June after a fall at his D.C. home. Just 11% reported a favorable view. McConnell's lengthy absence and past health scares are fueling speculation about his capacity to serve. — Kathleen Hunter

Mandela Barnes drops out of the Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor Mandela Barnes dropped out of the Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor on Thursday amid news that the state party had reviewed past allegations of inappropriate behavior, further shaking up the race less than two weeks before the Aug. 11 election. Read More. Dem judgment day Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios Democratic socialists look like they're about to rack up a stunning new victory: Their candidate in Michigan's Senate Democratic primary has the momentum heading into Tuesday's election, Axios' Mike Zapler writes. Why it matters: A win by Abdul El-Sayed in the swing state would turbocharge the party's left flank and validate establishment fears about the party's direction. If Democrats lose Michigan on Nov. 3, they almost certainly aren't winning the Senate. 🖼️ The big picture: Establishment Democrats have watched in horror as democratic socialist candidates pull off win after win in House primaries this year. El-Sayed, who's backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), is taking on an establishment favorite in a race that's become a proxy fight between the party's far-left and center-left wings. Democratic leaders have gone all-in for Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens because they think she can win moderate voters — and El-Sayed can't. But El-Sayed has vaulted to a hefty lead in the final stretch of the campaign. One survey this week had him up 15 points. Other polls have shown him with smaller but still substantial leads. Zoom in: Democratic socialists have proven they're no longer on the periphery. With Zohran Mamdani's win in New York and El-Sayed's momentum in Michigan, the party's center of gravity has shifted unmistakably in their direction. A CNN poll out yesterday showed about a third of Democratic voters identify as democratic socialists — and they're the most motivated to turn out on Election Day. But winning House primaries is one thing. Winning a statewide Senate primary in one of the nation's premier battlegrounds is another. 👀 The intrigue: The bigger question for Democrats is whether the party is undergoing the kind of makeover Republicans experienced a decade ago with Donald Trump — or if the democratic socialist surge is confined to the bluest enclaves. No primary this year will offer a clearer answer than Michigan's. Democratic socialists argue they're filling a vacuum. Even as establishment Democrats say El-Sayed can't win, they've struggled to articulate their own vision beyond "Trump is bad" and "stuff is too expensive." What we're watching: To truly show the left wing can compete in the most competitive terrain, El-Sayed would need to win in November against Rep. Mike Rogers, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Malaysia begins screening 5,000 refugees for their planned return to Myanmar Malaysia has started documenting and screening thousands of detained Myanmar nationals as part of a repatriation program agreed with Myanmar, Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution said Thursday. Read More.

Turkey wants to join a new Lebanon security initiative after UN mission ends Turkey is interested in participating in a new security initiative for Lebanon when the 7,500-member U.N. peacekeeping mission in the south of the country expires at the end of the year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a joint press statement with his Lebanese counterpart on Thursday. Read More.

Average 30-year US mortgage rate rises to highest level in a year at 6.66% The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate rose for the fourth consecutive week to its highest level in a year, another setback for prospective homebuyers hoping for a break from elevated home loan borrowing costs.The benchmark 30-year fixed rate mortgage rate rose to 6.66% from 6.58% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. One year ago, the average rate was 6.72%. Read More.

I have often wondered about this. Where are the evil angels now? Clearly some of them are working among us, but there must be a holding place for those not working in the world. Or did God allow all of them to roam and deceive the population? It seems to me, if that were the case, they might be able to overwhelm humanity.

✈️ 1 for the road: Dulles' flashy future Rendering: United Airlines Gold is in and people movers are out at Washington Dulles International Airport, Axios D.C.'s Cuneyt Dil and Mimi Montgomery report. The big picture: President Trump's planned $22.5 billion overhaul replaces aging concourses and adds millions of square feet of new capacity. With Trumpian flair, the president said yesterday that concourses C and D ("basic disasters") will be replaced, while the jet-age-era main terminal designed by Eero Saarinen ("one of the great architects of the world") will stay. Rendering: United Airlines 💰 Funding specifics weren't disclosed. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that United Airlines, which operates a hub at Dulles, "will partake in part of the payment." Trump floated a two-year timeline. United's announcement said the transformation will span "several years." Go deeper ...

📈 The U.S. economy grew at a 1.5% annualized rate in the second quarter, capturing a three-month stretch shaped by the Middle East conflict and a surge in energy prices. That's slightly slower than the 1.8% growth that economists expected. More from Courtenay Brown. US filings for jobless benefits rise to 197,000 last week, but layoffs remain historically low The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week but layoffs remain in the historically healthy range of the past few years. Read More.

☄️ Two annual meteor showers — the Alpha Capricornids and Southern Delta Aquariids — are both set to peak tonight. Another top show, the Perseid shower, peaks in mid-August. How to watch.

😬 Americans' midterm concerns Data: Charles F. Kettering Foundation and Gallup. Chart: Noah Bressner/Axios Many Americans are worried that November's midterm elections could be stolen or otherwise compromised, Axios' Avery Lotz reports from new Gallup polling. The findings: Majorities of Republicans (56%) and Democrats (77%) say they fear that politicians will pressure election officials to change voting outcomes. 80% of Americans overall report at least a "fair amount" of concern that political leaders will take actions they know are possibly illegal. 🗳️ Nearly three-quarters of Americans report at least a fair amount of concern about multiple aspects of the election process, rather than just one fear. 40% say that they're concerned about being confronted, followed or recorded while voting. Go deeper ... See the data.

Taco Bell's comeback plan Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Stock: Getty Images The CEO of Yum Brands, Taco Bell's parent company, says the chain's "magic formula" of "brand buzz, innovation, value and digital" will help it recover from a sales dip tied to the national cyclospora outbreak, Axios' Nathan Bomey reports. Health officials have identified more than 11,000 confirmed or suspected cases of the parasite, which can cause explosive diarrhea. The outbreak has been linked to lettuce from supplier Taylor Farms. 📉 Yum says that the chain's sales are down 2% in the quarter compared with a year earlier. CEO Chris Turner said on an earnings call today: "The brand has seen a meaningful near-term sales impact." But he added: "We expect the sales impact to be temporary." 🥬 Taco Bell has removed lettuce from Taylor Farms. Execs didn't say whether they would keep doing business with the supplier. Turner said: "Our teams are acting quickly and transparently while keeping the safety and well-being of our consumers as the top priority. ... Consumers have become increasingly aware that this is an industry-wide issue, not an issue specific to Taco Bell." Taylor Farms said in a statement: "We are confident in our food and food safety systems and will continue to be transparent as more information becomes available." 👑 Taco Bell has been the crown jewel of Yum's lineup in recent years, delivering consistent sales growth. But as Bank of America analyst Sara Senatore wrote Monday: "The past two weeks have brought the brand's momentum — which seemed accelerated through the year — to a sudden halt." Go deeper.

Everyone thinks we have a wonderful right to free speech because of the first amendment. But that is not true. Just go to Dearborn, Michigan, as I have, and try to preach any Bible doctrine on any street corner. Or try to hand out ANY Christian tract, and see what First Amendment you have.