Axios

The Trump administration asked Congress on Wednesday for $87.6 billion in supplemental funding, most of it to cover costs related to the Iran war.

Why it matters: The request is likely to intensify debate over presidential war powers as lawmakers in both parties question whether Congress should have authorized military action against Iran.

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.

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.