Former President Trump has something rare, precious and definitional: a moment — a fleeting chance to redefine himself, this election, America, Mike and Jim write in a Behind the Curtain column.

• Why it matters: Almost dying rocks perspectives — and people. Yes, Trump has shown little appetite for changing his ways, tone and words. But his advisers tell us Trump plans to seize his moment by toning down his Trumpiness, and dialing up efforts to unite a tinder-box America, when the Republican convention opens Monday in Milwaukee.

"I think it's real," Tucker Carlson — who'll speak in prime time at the convention, and talks to Trump often — told us. "Getting shot in the face changes a man."

• Trump — who landed yesterday in Milwaukee just over 24 hours after the assassination attempt — brought a rare succinctness to a post on his Truth Social platform: "UNITE AMERICA!"
• It's an echo of former President Ronald Reagan, who projected strength and humor after being shot in 1981. The late David S. Broder, legendary Washington Post political dean, recalled decades later that Reagan "was politically untouchable from that point on. He became a mythic figure."

Trump said in an interview yesterday with the Washington Examiner's Salena Zito, a Pittsburgh native who has long covered him, that he's rewriting his Thursday convention speech to take advantage of a historic moment and draw the country together.

• "The speech ... was going to be a humdinger," Trump told her as he boarded his plane in New Jersey. "Had this not happened, this would've been one of the most incredible speeches," aimed mostly at President Biden. "Honestly, it's going to be a whole different speech now."
• Zito writes that Trump repeatedly invoked God in their conversations. "It is a chance to bring the country together," Trump told her. "I was given that chance."

✈️ Trump had a loose, large white bandage on his right ear as he flew into Milwaukee aboard his private plane. "The doctor at the hospital said he never saw anything like this — he called it a miracle," Trump told New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin during an airborne interview.

• "I'm not supposed to be here. I'm supposed to be dead," Trump said.

Reality check: He's Trump. He could just become old Trump again.

• Incendiary attacks have flown from him and his allies. He has made Jan. 6 a cornerstone of his campaign, and defended those charged with crimes as "hostages" and "unbelievable patriots."
• Don Jr., campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a finalist to be Trump's running-mate, attacked Democrats and the media on X in the hours after the shooting. LaCivita deleted a post blaming Trump political opponents for the attack.

🖼️ The big picture: In last night's Oval Office address, Biden talked of "the need for us to lower the temperature." At least rhetorically, these two enemies have aligned on something big.

• Biden said while unity seems like the most elusive goal in America right now nothing is "more important for us now than standing together."

Column continues below.

We're told that Trump ordered aides not to allow the convention's prime-time speakers to update their remarks to dial up outrage over the shooting, Mike and Jim write.

• By contrast, Fox News last night featured prime-time Chyrons like "MEDIA LAYED [sic] GROUNDWORK FOR VIOLENCE AGAINST TRUMP" and "MEDIA BLAMES TRUMP FOR GETTING SHOT."

🔬 Between the lines: Even before Trump began engineering a more unifying convention, Biden allies felt boxed in about how to campaign against him now. At least for the moment, he's a more broadly sympathetic figure, buoyed by his visceral, showman's instinct to pump his fist as he was hauled off the stage.

• One close adviser, explaining the new convention plans, said Trump's gambit is that now Democrats "can't come after me anymore as a fascist. What're they gonna do now?"

The backstory: Trump's friends tell us sitting in court and getting convicted rattled him more than people realized.

• The possibility of spending his remaining years in prison slapped him straight(er).
• He was suddenly more open to do whatever it takes to win — even if it meant toning it down in the CNN debate, and going dark in the aftermath, while some Democrats and the media torched Biden.

Now Trump has a legitimate moment to change, substantively:

1. He can unify the party. His rival, Nikki Haley, is a late add to the convention, with a speaking slot on Tuesday. So fully unifying the party is plausible, if he and others show grace and class with his Republican skeptics. Imagine if she were named to the ticket or told on stage she would play a prominent role in his administration. As a sign of how bullish Republicans are, an ebullient Trump adviser told us yesterday: "Even the DeSantis people are fired up."
2. He could unify America. Imagine he gave a speech featuring something he rarely shows: humility. Imagine him telling the nation that he has been too rough, too loose, too combative with his language — and now realizes words can have consequences, and promises to tone it down and bring new voices into the White House if he wins.
3. He could box out Democrats. Some of his friends are pushing him to promise RFK Jr. a role in his administration in exchange for an endorsement. If you combine Trump support + RFK support, you have a very different election.
4. He could show a different side of himself. In public, he's all fire and bombast. But his wife, Melania, talked in a statement yesterday of looking "beyond the left and the right, beyond the red and the blue." People who know Trump well say he's a gracious host, inquisitive, loves music and social media. This is the kind of moment when people give leaders a second look, a second chance.

Like all moments, this one will pass in a blink. You seize them — or let them waft away.

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President Biden used a short, six-minute Oval Office address last night to ask Americans to "cool it" on divisive political rhetoric, while insisting he would make the case for "our record" in the coming weeks, Axios' Hans Nichols writes.

• Why it matters: This thread-the-needle goal reflects the huge challenge ahead for Biden's re-election campaign, which has been based partly on attacking Donald Trump as a threat to democracy.

Biden will try to satisfy two audiences at once: To a nation shocked by the assassination attempt on Trump, he'll cast himself as a calming force.

• But to satisfy a Democratic Party still reeling from his debate performance, he'll still try to show a feisty side, touting his record and casting Trump's policies as "backward."
• He'll try to do it all amid continuing skepticism in his own party, and signs that Trump — long known for attacking anyone in his path — is discussing a post-shooting strategy that emphasizes unity over conflict.

🔎 Zoom in: Behind the Resolute Desk, Biden laid out his plans for political civility and Democratic victory.

• "I believe politics ought to be an arena for peaceful debate," he said.
• For all the obvious and intense personal animus between them, both Biden and Trump have struck similar notes during the past 36 hours, calling for national unity and solidarity.

👂 What we're hearing: The attempted assassination of Trump has paused Democrats' public debate about whether Biden is fit to lead the party.

• Privately, the conversations are raging. Biden has more work to do to convince donors and elected officials that he should be the party's nominee.
• Donors remain frustrated. Lawmakers are skittish. Delegates are wondering when the party's mysterious virtual roll call of their votes will be held to certify the Democratic nominee.

Andrew Solender contributed reporting.

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Few conclusive details have emerged about the life and beliefs of Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old man who tried to assassinate former President Trump.

• FBI officials said yesterday that they're combing Crooks' background and social media activities, while working to get access to his phone.

Investigators believe Crooks acted alone in the attack on Trump, which killed at least one spectator and left two others critically injured.

• FBI agent Kevin Rojek told reporters that the gun used in the attempted assassination of Trump, in which the shooter also died, was an "AR-style 556 rifle" that was bought legally.
• Crooks tried out for his school's rifle team in suburban Pittsburgh, but was turned away because he was "such a comically bad shot." He was a member of a local gun club.

Go deeper: Congress to grill Secret Service.

This photograph by the AP's Evan Vucci — vividly framed on TIME's upcoming cover — became an instantly iconic symbol of a dark chapter in American history.

• The moment was an extraordinary illustration of Trump's raw political instincts and how keenly aware he is of the images he projects.

How Vucci got the picture.

OpenAI researchers believe the company is closing in on building AI that can perform human-level "reasoning," according to reports from Bloomberg and Reuters.

• Why it matters: AI experts disagree over whether today's large language models — which excel at generating text and images — will ever be capable of broadly understanding the world and flexibly adapting to novel information and circumstances, Axios' Scott Rosenberg writes.

Driving the news: OpenAI has internally shared definitions for five levels of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, according to Bloomberg.

💡 An OpenAI document Bloomberg reproduced defines the levels:

1. Chatbots: AI with conversational language.
2. Reasoners: Human-level problem-solving.
3. Agents: Systems that can take actions.
4. Innovators: AI that can aid in invention.
5. Organizations: AI that can do the work of an organization.

State of play: At a company meeting last week, per Bloomberg, OpenAI leaders told staff their systems currently worked at level 1 but were "on the cusp" of achieving level 2.

• Separately, Reuters reported details of a long-rumored project at OpenAI aimed at developing AI that can reason at a human level, plan ahead, work out problems with multiple steps and independently perform "deep research."

Keep reading ... Get Axios AI+.

While electric cars are becoming more common, unestablished and rapidly changing social norms about vehicle charging are befuddling new owners, Axios auto expert Joann Muller writes.

• Why it matters: One of EV owners' biggest complaints is about others "hogging" space at crowded charging stations by leaving their car plugged in even after their battery has been fully charged.

Another gripe: People who snag the highest-output chargers, even if their car can't accept power at the fastest rates.

• It's like driving a Prius at 50 mph in the left lane — all it does is tick off other motorists.
• It's usually not malice driving such behavior. People just don't know any better.

🚘 Zoom in: One charging network operator, Electrify America, is testing a strategy that would automatically end charging sessions when a customer's battery hits 85%.

• Why 85%? It's close to the threshold when charging automatically slows down anyway to protect batteries from overheating.

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Spain is king of European soccer for a record fourth time after a thrilling 2-1 win over England in the Euro 2024 final.

• For England, it's another agonizing near-miss in the team's decades-long tale of underachievement. Go deeper.

Above: The Copa America championship between Argentina and Colombia in Miami was delayed more than an hour after fans without tickets rushed the gates.

• Argentina won the South American tournament — which also included six teams from North America, Central America and the Caribbean — 1-0 in extra time.