President Trump is redirecting his fury over the Jeffrey Epstein files into one of MAGA's oldest obsessions: punishing Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and officials involved in the 2016 Russia investigation, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

• Why it matters: In Trump's view, any documents linking him to Epstein are a "hoax" cooked up by the forces behind the Russia probe. To him, it's all one story — a years-long "witch hunt" that plagued his presidency from Day 1.

Seizing on new criminal referrals by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Trump on Sunday posted an AI-generated video on Truth Social showing Obama being arrested by the FBI.

• It's the kind of trollish meme Trump shared often while out of office — but that now carries new weight, as his Justice Department escalates efforts to target his longtime political enemies.

🔭 Zoom in: After weeks of stewing over the Epstein scandal, MAGA was jolted by a new memo from Gabbard accusing Obama administration officials of a "treasonous conspiracy" to sabotage Trump's presidency in 2016.

• The "new evidence" centers on findings from the Obama-era intelligence community that Russia didn't alter vote tallies by hacking election infrastructure.

Gabbard alleges that senior Obama officials suppressed or manipulated these internal assessments to support a broader narrative that Russia had intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump.

🥊 Reality check: No serious investigation ever claimed Russia changed actual vote tallies.

• The FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia focused largely on Moscow's influence campaign, including the hacking and leaking of Democratic emails.
• Special counsel Robert Mueller and the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee — where now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio was a senior member — both concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win.

Zoom out: Gabbard's claims of a "years-long coup" against Trump landed exactly as intended — exhilarating a MAGA base that has grown restless over the president's attempts to move on from the Epstein case.

• With Gabbard referring the findings to the Justice Department, MAGA is now primed to expect prosecutions of Obama, Clinton, former FBI director James Comey, former CIA director John Brennan and other high-profile officials.

But as with the Epstein files, there's a real risk of overpromising and underdelivering — both in terms of alienating supporters and further politicizing the justice system.

• Read the DNI release ... and memo.

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The AI industry is getting nothing but green lights in all directions. Now it needs to deliver on its promises, Axios' Scott Rosenberg writes.

• Why it matters: AI's formative era is right now — and the technology is developing with almost total freedom.

Zoom in: AI makers are getting everything they have ever asked for or could possibly want:

1. No limits: More money, energy and resources are flowing into the technology's development than any other industry has ever received in such a concentrated time span.

• Four companies — Alphabet/Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon — expect to spend more than $300 billion this year on AI, while private investors and governments pour hundreds of billions more into AI infrastructure.

2. No rules: In the second Trump era, the U.S. has dropped any pretense of trying to erect regulatory guardrails around AI.

• The White House AI Action Plan, expected tomorrow, will promote speedy deployment to counter China. The "doomer" camp's fear that runaway superintelligence might destroy humanity is no longer even a part of the policy conversation.

3. No arguments: CEOs and businesses are pushing AI use on sometimes resistant workforces and a skeptical public, telling hesitaters to get on the AI train or get left behind.

• The phenomenal popularity of ChatGPT and its competitors suggests there's huge demand for these tools. But surveys also show the U.S. public favors a more careful approach to its adoption.

4. No doubts: Business leaders and policy makers have successfully sidelined critical questions about harms from AI bias and misuse, privacy violations and appropriation of intellectual property.

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Higher-earning Americans are feeling pretty good these days. But sentiment among those at the bottom is stagnating at much lower levels, Axios' Emily Peck writes.

• Why it matters: The difference in sentiment between the top and bottom income groups is the widest since Morning Consult began tracking the data in 2018.

Driving the groups apart:

📈 The stock market: The S&P 500 has bounced back — and then some — from its April "Liberation Day" lows.

• A rising 401(k) drives spirits higher. But the vast majority of low-income adults don't have money invested in stocks.

🏡 Home values: Higher house prices make homeowners feel great — a high Zestimate is a mood booster.

• That does nothing for renters, except make them feel locked out of the American dream.

👷‍♀️ The job market: While overall unemployment still seems low, lower-earning adults are increasingly reporting a loss of pay or income in Morning Consult data, says chief economist John Leer.

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In his first interviews since the 2024 election, Hunter Biden suggested that his father's disastrous presidential debate was partially the result of taking Ambien while traveling and trashed Democrats who helped push him out of the race, Axios' Sareen Habeshian writes.

• "They give him Ambien to be able to sleep. He gets up on the stage, and he looks like he's a deer in the headlights," Hunter told YouTube personality Andrew Callaghan in an interview out yesterday on "Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan."

"We could have survived if it weren't for the fact that people in the Democratic Party — the inside elite Beltway group of people — were not going to allow it to happen," Hunter told former DNC chair Jaime Harrison on the new podcast, "At Our Table with Jaime Harrison."

• Go deeper: Hunter slams George Clooney, Jake Tapper and David Axelrod.

Trump administration economists are spotlighting a little-noticed piece of federal data they argue shows a business investment surge is in the works — one that could have lasting consequences for U.S. growth, Axios' Neil Irwin writes.

• Production of business equipment surged in the first half of the year, according to Fed data.

Why it matters: Industrial production of business equipment is an early indicator of capital spending — investments in property, equipment and technology — that ultimately fuels higher productivity and higher incomes.

These are the goods companies buy to increase their productive capacity — a bet on future growth. It includes everything from tractor-trailers to computer servers to industrial machinery.

• Axios has learned that Treasury officials will soon begin highlighting this data as a key economic achievement of the administration.

Between the lines: Trump administration officials view increasing business capital investment as the linchpin of their economic agenda, including ultimately driving gains in blue-collar wages.

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Despite protests from Martin Luther King Jr.'s family and the civil rights group he once led, the Trump administration has publicly released records of the FBI's surveillance of the slain civil rights icon, Axios' Russell Contreras writes.

• Why it matters: The move pits President Trump's determination to release documents the government has kept secret for more than half a century against the family's lingering pain over how J. Edgar Hoover's FBI spied on King and tried to intimidate and humiliate him.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released over 230,000 pages of documents related to the 1968 assassination of MLK.

• In January, Trump ordered the release of all records the U.S. government still holds about King's assassination in 1968, as well as the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy (1963) and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (1968).

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House Republicans have virtually stopped work on all major legislation leading up to their six-week summer recess to avoid taking votes on forcing the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, Axios' Andrew Solender and Kate Santaliz write.

• Why it matters: Democrats have been gleefully using every opportunity to force their GOP colleagues on the record about Epstein as President Trump pressures them to make the issue go away.

The House had been scheduled to vote on GOP legislation involving immigration and environmental legislation this week.

• But Democrats planned to force votes on amendments aimed at forcing the Justice Department to release all its documents on Epstein.

🔮 What's next: Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) tells reporters he's confident he can get 218 members to sign onto a discharge petition that would force a vote on releasing the files.

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Elon Musk's long-awaited Tesla retro diner and charging station — which he first hinted at over seven years ago — officially opened yesterday in Los Angeles.

• The restaurant serves burgers in Cybertruck-shaped boxes and features giant screens that play movie clips.

Musk said Tesla could open locations in major cities around the world if the restaurant "turns out well."

• What's on the menu.