Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Monday, July 18th. I'm Nailibutu. Today, watching

a political realignment in real time, plus how swing state voters feel about Trump's role

in the January 6th riot. But first, historic heat in Europe is today's one big thing.

France and the UK are facing record high temperatures this week, and what's shaping up to be one of

the worst heatwaves on record in Western Europe. And a wildfire crisis has caused thousands to

evacuate, Spain, Portugal, and France. Here to provide some context on all of this is Axios climate

reporter Andrew Friedman. Hi, Andrew. Hi there. Thanks for having me. Andrew, it seems like Europe has

these kind of heatwaves every summer, but I was checking the forecast for London this week.

And it's mind-boggling to me. It's supposed to be 101 degrees Fahrenheit there tomorrow. Yeah,

the forecast for the UK is actually unprecedented. Everything that I'm seeing in these computer models

showing the weather forecast for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, in parts of Europe, they're printing out

something that just hasn't happened before. And we have to be more ready for these types of

situations. And one of those responses is what the UK did on Friday, which was making that

decision to raise the alert level to a national emergency. And Andrew, of course, the big difference

between here in Europe is air conditioning, which is not very common. So given that what is the

public health threat with this extreme level of heat? So the public health threat in Europe is

really acute. I would say that judging from past heatwaves as recently as the Pacific Northwest

heatwave of last year, we're looking at the likelihood of several thousand deaths as a result

of this event, both in the UK, France, as well as several other countries.

What about these wildfires? I mentioned at the beginning that thousands of people have been

evacuated. Are people also in danger of losing their homes?

There are homes that are in danger. Some of these fires are in the vicinity of popular tourist

...