👢 Axios AM: The Texas test

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The Texas Senate race has become a national laboratory for anti-"woke" politics, testing whether voters still recoil from the language of 2020 amid the economic pain of 2026, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

• Why it matters: Republicans came away from 2024 convinced they had won more than an election — they had broken through on culture, turning Democrats' progressive language and identity politics into symbols of elite detachment.
• The durability of that culture-war coup is now an open question, as the GOP tries to redeploy the same playbook in a far more hostile midterm environment.

Zoom in: Texas has produced a Senate race in which both parties see the other nominee as the perfect caricature of everything voters hate about the opposition.

🐘 For Republicans: Texas state Rep. James Talarico offers the dream target — a young, viral progressive whose old comments can be stripped of context and turned into a one-man museum of "woke" Democratic excess.

• Republicans have seized on Talarico's 2021 floor speech declaring that "God is nonbinary," along with past comments on racism, whiteness and trans children, to cast him as a radical disguised as a Texas preacher.
• The attacks already are veering into sexuality- and masculinity-coded territory: Talarico's opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, has mocked him as "Low-T," while White House adviser Stephen Miller falsely labeled him as Democrats' "first transgender Senate candidate."
• Talarico has conceded that he "missed the mark" on some "cringey comments," while insisting his underlying principles — that "racism is immoral and wrong" and that "trans people deserve dignity and equality" — flow from his Christian faith.

🫏 For Democrats: Paxton is a scandal-scarred Trump ally whose legal and ethical baggage could turn even a red-state Senate race into a referendum on Republican corruption.

• Paxton was impeached by the GOP-led Texas House in 2023 — then acquitted by the Texas Senate — over allegations that he abused his office to benefit a donor.
• He spent nearly a decade under indictment on fraud charges before reaching a pretrial deal in 2024. He has been plagued by whistleblower claims, a now-closed federal corruption probe and a very public divorce tied to allegations of adultery.
• Talarico's campaign wants to make Paxton the face of Republican impunity — arguing that his scandals aren't distractions from the race, but the clearest evidence of what the GOP has become.

The bottom line: Texas will be the ultimate test of whether the GOP's anti-"woke" strategy can survive the transition from insurgency to incumbency.

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Corporate profits are taking the largest chunk of America's total income since a brief period of the early 1950s, as the slice of the pie going to worker pay has shrunk to the thinnest on record, Axios' Matt Phillips writes.

The big picture: "It's the latest milestone in a trend that became pronounced in the 2000s, then picked up speed after the pandemic," noted Wall Street Journal chief economics commentator Greg Ip (gift link).

• "Adjusted for inflation, hourly wages are up 3% since the end of 2019 while profits are up 50%. That, in a nutshell, explains the chasm between an ebullient stock market and anxious public."

The company best known for powering the AI boom is coming for the PC: Next week, Nvidia is expected to debut the first Windows computers that use its chips as the main processor, sources confirm to Axios' Ina Fried.

• Why it matters: Microsoft's first AI PC push stumbled. But Nvidia's arrival gives it a second chance, this time with the world's hottest chipmaker attached.

Nvidia and Microsoft will unveil their joint work and the first computers running the chips at two key industry conferences — the Computex trade show in Taiwan and Microsoft's Build developer conference in San Francisco.

• Nvidia-powered PCs are expected from both Microsoft's homegrown Surface brand and other computer makers, including Dell, sources confirmed.

Microsoft is also expected to debut software that makes it easier for people to have AI agents do work locally on their Windows computer.

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UnitedHealth Group is expanding access to doula support to make maternity care easier to access and navigate.

Key numbers: Over 7 million people across the country could qualify for the doula support offering by 2027.

Learn more.

President Trump was handed a trio of bad news rulings by judges yesterday:

1. His $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization" fund was blocked from moving forward for the time being by a federal judge.
2. He was ordered by a different federal judge to respond to "grievous" accusations that his settlement with the IRS, which led to the creation of his anti-weaponization fund, was "premised on deception."
3. His name was ordered to be removed from the Kennedy Center, with a D.C. district judge declaring, "Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it."

In a Truth Social post, Trump indicated he may abandon the Kennedy Center effort. The administration has not given its next steps on the fund battle.

🎸 Outside of court, a sixth performer withdrew from the Freedom 250 concert series over concerns about the event's partisan tilt.

Nick Bilton, named this week as the fifth executive producer in the 58-year history of "60 Minutes," yesterday spent his first day in the new role at CBS in New York, meeting some of the 80+ show staff, walking the halls and introducing himself.

• He took over a show in turmoil and was greeted with disparaging anonymous comments to media reporters. CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss is counting on his outsider energy.

Bilton, who as a tech writer at The New York Times and Vanity Fair was known as a future-thinker who was good at working a room, told me:

AI tools might be hallucinating less. But they're still spitting out inaccurate answers cloaked in polished, hyper-confident language, Axios' Meg Morrone writes.

• Why it matters: The more people trust AI, the less likely they are to catch costly mistakes. It's a growing problem as people increasingly lean on the technology for research, medical advice and schoolwork.

The big picture: Obvious hallucinations are easy to catch. The real trouble comes from false answers that sound convincing.

• Plausible citations, mostly correct summaries, and confidently wrong answers slip past users.
• If AI becomes accurate enough often enough, people might stop fact-checking altogether.

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Americans are still firing up the barbecue this summer, but high beef prices have them trading down to cheaper proteins — chicken, pork and turkey, Axios' Kelly Tyko writes.

• Ground beef prices are up 14% year over year, according to Nielsen retail data. Average fresh beef prices hit record levels in April, per USDA.
• Chicken prices, meanwhile, have remained relatively stable.

🛒 What's happening: Tyson Foods said earlier this month that its beef sales volume fell 13% year over year, while chicken sales volume rose 1.7% as consumers shifted toward cheaper proteins.

• Hormel Foods said this week that Jennie-O ground turkey posted another quarter of double-digit dollar sales growth as consumers prioritized "affordable protein options."

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Mail carriers in Los Angeles, Dallas and Denver reported the most dog bite incidents in 2025, new USPS data reveals.

• That's based on overall incidents, and doesn't reflect those cities' populations — canine or otherwise.
• St. Louis, in particular, over-indexes on dog bites when adjusting for population size.

📬 USPS' new dog bite awareness campaign starts Monday.

• The agency's safety manager, Leeann Theriault, said: "Preventing dog-related incidents requires constant, shared vigilance."

Explore the data.

Waiting for approval shouldn’t hold back better health. UnitedHealth Group is removing 30% of prior authorization requirements for select surgeries and some tests like echocardiograms.

The reason: By simplifying the process, we’re making care easier to navigate and afford.

Learn more.

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