Axios

Elon Musk tweeted that he has received "verbal agreement" to build a super-fast, 29-minute "hyper loop" taking passengers from New York to Washington, D.C. Traveling within an airless tube, passengers could disembark or get on along the way in Baltimore and Philadelphia.

There were no further immediate details, and no confirmation from any officials along the route. But, should such a system be built, it would out-perform any type of current travel options in the East.

The bottom line: The idea still seems outlandish from almost every vantage point — technology, land acquisition, expense, and so on. Yet, given Musk's foray into space and his formidable electric car company, we have learned not to underestimate Musk. He even has a rival: On July 13, a company called Hyperloop One conducted a slow test of its technology on a Nevada track and is currently looking at 11 serious proposals for where to build a working model, with the idea of reducing the number to three.

The U.S. Treasury announced Thursday that it is fining Exxon Mobil $2 million for violating Ukraine-related sanctions in May 2014, when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was CEO, per AP.

• The Treasury Department said Exxon showed "reckless disregard" for the sanctions when two of the oil giant's U.S. subsidiaries signed legal contracts with Igor Sechin, the president of Russian oil giant Rosneft, who is currently blacklisted in the U.S. for Russia's actions in Ukraine.
• Key line from AP: "When Tillerson was CEO, he said Exxon didn't support sanctions generally because it found them usually ineffective."
• Why it matters: Tillerson has generally managed to avoid becoming involved in the Russia investigations, despite his prior ties to the Kremlin. However, the discovery of his company's sanctions violations could bring him back into focus.

Exxon's pushback: Exxon issued a statement in response Thursday morning stating that the company followed "clear guidance from the White House and Treasury Department" when signing the documents involving Rosneft. The oil giant also argued that the Treasury "is trying to retroactively enforce a new interpretation" of the sanctions order, and that the fine is "fundamentally unfair."Later Thursday afternoon, Exxon announced it is suing the Treasury Dept. for their unjust action.

A lot has shifted in climate change issues over the last 11 years, but you might not be able to tell by watching former vice president Al Gore's sequel to his 2006 Academy Award-winning "Inconvenient Truth."

• As one attendee told me after the film's Wednesday night premiere in D.C.: "The film was an unusual combination of electoral self-deprecation and climate narcissism."
• Despite its name ("Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power), it's the film that actually ignores the inconvenient reality climate change advocates are now facing with the Trump administration. Instead, we saw mostly more of what we saw in the first film, which is to say: Gore himself and the impacts of climate change (albeit marginally worse).
• Why it matters: The film, and its Washington premiere, showed how much of the climate movement is out of touch with political reality right now — Republicans control Congress and the White House is run by a president who doesn't acknowledge climate change is real, let alone a problem worthy of addressing.