President Trump's recent audacious foreign policy moves have astounded even some of his harshest critics, Axios' Dave Lawler writes.

• Why it matters: Just in the Middle East, and just in the past week, Trump has met with a leader the U.S. officially considers a terrorist ... announced he'll lift all sanctions on Syria ... and cut a truce with the Houthis plus a hostage deal with Hamas, both of which excluded Israel.

💬 Biden administration veterans who spoke with Axios raised questions about Trump's motivations but grudgingly saluted his boldness.

• "Gosh, I wish I could work for an administration that could move that quickly," one admitted.
• "He does all this, and it's kind of silence, it's met with a shrug," says Ned Price, a former senior State Department official under President Biden. "He has the ability to do things politically that previous presidents did not, because he has complete unquestioned authority over the Republican caucus."
• "It's hard not to be simultaneously terrified at the thought of the damage he can cause with such power, and awed by his willingness to brazenly shatter so many harmful taboos," says Rob Malley, who held senior posts in three Democratic administrations — including handling Iran talks under Presidents Obama and Biden.

🔎 Zoom in: On issue after issue, Trump is taking steps no recent president would have even considered.

• He abandoned the unified Western position to back Ukraine "as long as it takes" by negotiating directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin and declaring that Kyiv will never get Crimea back and must cut a deal now.
• He inserted himself directly in the recent Kashmir crisis, something past administrations have steered clear of to avoid antagonizing India.
• He's endorsed direct talks with Iran and shrugged off hawks at home and abroad who tied the Obama and Biden administrations in knots. It helps that many of them, like Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, are loath to cross Trump.
• Perhaps most shocking to veterans of previous administrations, Trump authorized direct talks with Hamas last month that Israeli officials only learned about through espionage (or by reading Axios).

👓 Between the lines: All the former Democratic officials who spoke to Axios questioned Trump's motives, even for policies they personally agreed with.

• They note that he's not just breaching norms to make peace, but also to sell cryptocurrency, expand his real estate portfolio or obtain a $400 million jet.

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The Trump administration will be fighting an uphill battle today as it tries to persuade the Supreme Court to let more of President Trump's agenda take effect, Axios' Sam Baker writes.

• While this morning's oral arguments are focused on how courts have handled birthright citizenship, the Justice Department has urged the justices to impose a broader crackdown on nationwide injunctions.

⚖️ Federal district courts have issued roughly 30 orders blocking the Trump administration from implementing major parts of its agenda.

• Three district courts have blocked Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship from taking effect. All three said their rulings applied not only to the specific cases before them, but to the entire policy, nationwide.

Why it matters: Nationwide injunctions from lower courts have become increasingly common since the Obama administration, and have exploded under Trump.

There's a good-faith, non-ideological argument that courts are handing down too many of them.

• There are more than 600 district court judges in the U.S. — when all of them have the power to freeze a presidential policy, lawsuits can grind the presidency to a halt more easily than ever before.

👀 What we're watching: Four of the court's conservative justices — Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas — have called for a crackdown on nationwide injunctions.

• But birthright citizenship presents different legal questions, and the procedural history of these cases is different.

Today's arguments should provide some indication of whether those four would still be united — and, if so, whether they'd be able to persuade one more justice to join their cause.

• Keep reading.

Count Boeing as a big winner of the Trump administration's trade policy —despite a sometimes frosty relationship with the president, Axios' Nathan Bomey writes.

• Why it matters: It's a decisive turn for a company slammed by business and regulatory disasters caused by quality troubles, legal problems, labor issues and — most recently — trade walls.

In just the last week, the company has picked up big sales deals in the U.K. and the Middle East and avoided a potentially crushing Chinese ban on plane deliveries.

• Boeing scored the biggest aircraft sale in its history in a deal announced yesterday by President Trump.
• Qatar Airways is buying up to 210 Boeing 787 Dreamliner and 777X aircraft, all made in the U.S. with GE Aerospace engines, the White House announced.
• A Saudi company ordered up to 30 new single-aisle Boeing jets.
• Boeing reportedly nailed a deal to sell 30 of its 787 Dreamliners to British Airways parent IAG.

The intrigue: The president has repeatedly torched Boeing since retaking the White House over its long-delayed program to build two new Air Force One jets — a contract Trump originally signed early in his first term.

• The company now plans to deliver the two new jets in 2027, before Trump leaves office.

Keep reading.

Google is now the leader in generative AI-related patents and also leads in the emerging area of AI agents, Axios' Ina Fried writes from data by IFI Claims.

• Why it matters: Patent filings, though not a direct proxy for innovation, indicate areas of keen research interest. Generative AI patent applications in the U.S. have risen by more than 50% in recent months.

Keep reading ... Explore the data.

White House health adviser Calley Means told Axios' Maya Goldman at our inaugural Future of Health summit in D.C. that RFK Jr. "has a spiritual mandate" from voters to reform the nation's health system.

• Why it matters: The former influencer — and brother of surgeon general nominee Casey Means — said there's "a war on the American public having transparency" about their health and their treatment. Keep reading.

🩺 More key moments from the summit:

• 📺 Katie Couric, a cancer survivor who has long advocated for better research and awareness, called the Trump administration's scientific funding cuts "terrible," "chilling," "unfathomable and unbelievable." Go deeper.
• 💊 Oscar Health CEO Mark Bertolini on talking with the Trump administration: "You don't use certain words, like DEI, bad word. ... I sit on the Verizon board, I chair their finance committee, our DEI effort is alive and well, it's just not called that anymore."
• 🏛️ Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) slammed RFK's testimony to Congress yesterday, criticizing him for saying he would "probably" vaccinate his children for measles if he had to decide today. Go deeper.

🥽 Above: Anthony Sandler (right) from Children's National Hospital demonstrated augmented reality tech that superimposes an ultrasound over a surgeon's view of a patient through a headset.

• That makes it easier for surgeons to be precise and not look back and forth between the ultrasound image and the patient.

Watch the summit.

The Trump administration gave Iran a proposal for a nuclear deal during the fourth round of negotiations on Sunday, a U.S. official and two other sources with direct knowledge tell Axios' Barak Ravid.

• Why it matters: It was the first time since the nuclear talks started in early April that White House envoy Steve Witkoff presented a written proposal to the Iranians.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi took the proposal back to Tehran for consultations with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Masoud Pezeshkian and other top officials.

• President Trump said Tuesday in Saudi Arabia that he'd presented "an olive branch" to the Iranians but stressed: "This is not an offer that will last forever. The time is right now for them to choose."

Behind the scenes: How the proposal was ironed out.

Eric Schmidt, the former chairman and CEO of Google, is out with a TED talk interview today — titled "The AI Revolution Is Underhyped" — predicting that "the eventual state of this is the computers running all business processes."

• Why it matters: "I want to be clear that the arrival of this intelligence — both at the AI level, the AGI, which is general intelligence, and then superintelligence — is the most important thing that's going to happen in about 500 years, maybe 1,000 years, in human society," Schmidt says.

Comparing AI to a marathon, Schmidt continues: "As this stuff happens quicker, you will forget what was true two years ago or three years ago. That's the key thing. So my advice to you all is: Ride the wave, but ride it every day."

• Watch the TED talk.

Nashville's Lower Broadway has become a twangier take on the Big Apple's Times Square, with surging tourism fueling astronomical real estate values, Axios Nashville's Nate Rau writes.

• Why it matters: The entertainment district has become a major hub for corporate investment, lucrative licensing deals and record-setting property purchases.

Surging real estate values are commonplace nationwide. But few locations in the country tell the story as dramatically as a half-mile stretch of road in the heart of Music City.

• 25 honky-tonks saw their property values go up by at least 140% over the last four years, according to an Axios analysis of the new property appraisals.

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