An epidemic of suspicious trading has emerged around President Trump's most consequential decisions, Axios' Zachary Basu reports.

🛢️ On Monday, $580 million in oil futures flooded the market roughly 16 minutes before Trump announced a pause in strikes on Iranian power plants.

• On the Friday before the war began, more than 150 Polymarket accounts placed hundreds of bets predicting a U.S. strike on Iran by the next day, according to a New York Times analysis (gift link).
• On Jan. 2, a trader turned roughly $32,000 into more than $400,000 by betting on the capture of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro before it was announced the next morning.
• Last April, a surge of bullish stock trades appeared minutes before Trump announced a 90-day pause on his "Liberation Day" tariffs.

🤷‍♂️ Zoom in: Because these accounts are anonymous, it's unclear whether they involve insiders with advance knowledge, coordinated traders or independent speculators.

• White House spokesman Kush Desai told Axios: "All federal employees are subject to government ethics guidelines that prohibit the use of nonpublic information for financial benefit. However, any implication that Administration officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting."

There's no evidence Trump knew about the suspicious trades or that any officials were involved.

• More broadly, his presidency has coincided with business and investment activity involving allies, donors and family members, some of which has been historically lucrative.
• For example, the Trump family's crypto venture has generated billions — with investors including a Chinese crypto mogul who later settled his SEC fraud case, and an Emirati royal lobbying Washington for AI chips.

White House counsel David Warrington tells Axios: "The president has no involvement in business deals that would implicate his constitutional responsibilities."

• "President Trump performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound manner and to suggest otherwise is either ill-informed or malicious."

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Taping "The Axios Show" in Sacramento yesterday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) praised Elon Musk as this generation's Thomas Edison — then accused the Tesla CEO of surrendering the EV market to China.

• "It breaks my heart," Newsom told Axios' Alex Thompson, describing Musk as "one of the great disappointments" of our time.

🇨🇳 Why it matters: China holds 70% of the global EV market. Newsom argues Musk — the man who pioneered America's EV industry — is now accelerating that dominance by pivoting Tesla toward robotics.

• "I think this is Trump, not just Elon Musk," Newsom added, referring to the administration's systematic dismantling of federal EV incentives and mandates.

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Iranian officials have told the countries trying to mediate peace talks with the U.S. that they have been tricked twice by President Trump and "don't want to be fooled again," according to a source with direct knowledge of those discussions, Axios' Barak Ravid and Marc Caputo report.

• The U.S. is pushing for in-person peace talks as soon as tomorrow in Islamabad.
• But during both previous rounds of U.S.–Iran talks, Trump approved crippling surprise attacks while still claiming to want a deal.

🇵🇰🇪🇬🇹🇷 Iranian officials have told the mediators — Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey — that U.S. military movements and Trump's decision to deploy reinforcements have made them suspicious of his proposal for peace talks.

• Several U.S. fighter jet squadrons and thousands of troops are expected to arrive in the Middle East soon.
• A White House official said a ground operation is an option but stressed Trump hasn't made a decision.

⛴️ To the Trump administration, the massing of forces is a sign he's serious about negotiating from gunboats, not that he's negotiating in bad faith.

• One Trump adviser says: "Trump has a hand open for a deal and the other is a fist, waiting to punch you in the f***ing face."

📩 The White House has sent messages to the Iranians that Trump wants to negotiate and floated Vice President Vance's possible involvement as proof.

• But Trump is simultaneously trying to build up options for diplomacy and military escalation in order to be able to decide based on developments, U.S. and Israeli officials say.

The officials say another two to three weeks of war is planned, even if talks do happen.

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Rep. Deborah Ross (D-N.C.) says Democrats and Republicans agree on some AI regulation, including guardrails around deepfakes and creators' intellectual property.

• 🎤 She spoke last night as part of the second day of Axios' AI+DC Summit.

Ross added that those areas of bipartisanship extend to the states.

• Despite White House attempts to squash state-level regulation, she said, "we've seen red and blue states regulate deepfakes, regulate election interference, regulate whether a chatbot can be a psychiatrist, because we've seen kids who have literally committed suicide because of their interaction with AI."

🎤 Join us today at 2:10 p.m. ET for the third and final day of the summit.

• I'll interview Meta President and Vice Chairman Dina Powell McCormick and Constellation Energy CEO Joe Dominguez, and we'll have conversations with the White House's Michael Kratsios, Lockheed Martin CTO Craig Martell, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.), Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and more. Watch here.

🛍️ Exclusive: Mark Zuckerberg today is launching Meta Small Business, a company-wide push to support entrepreneurship and drive AI adoption.

• Zuckerberg asks product managers, designers, engineers and other employees to reach out if they want to work on the new effort.

Why it matters: The plan leans into a Meta strength in the AI wars as competitors pursue large-scale enterprise. More than 250 million small businesses globally use Meta across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

What they're saying: "In the AI era, it should be easier than ever for people to build new businesses," the Meta founder and CEO says in an internal post. "We want to build the services that enable this. This is important for ensuring that people broadly share in the prosperity created by superintelligence."

• Meta Small Business will be led by three of the company's most senior executives, including Meta President and Vice Chairman Dina Powell McCormick and head of product Naomi Gleit.

🔮 What's next: Powell McCormick will discuss the plan when I interview her this afternoon at our AI+DC Summit. Watch here.

Microsoft and Nvidia are joining forces to accelerate nuclear power buildup, Axios' Chuck McCutcheon reports from Houston.

• The initiative is the latest example of the tech industry leaning on nuclear's emerging potential to handle AI's huge energy needs.

🤖 Microsoft President Brad Smith unveiled the "AI for nuclear" initiative yesterday at the CERAWeek energy industry conference.

• Smith said the companies have created a solution "that hopefully will play an important role in expanding the construction of nuclear power."

🏗️ Darryl Willis, Microsoft's vice president for worldwide energy and resources industry, wrote in a blog post that AI tools can help identify documentation inconsistencies, unify plant construction data, and support "digital twins" — virtual replicas that allow engineers to test changes.

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The Trump administration's suspension of some immigrants' work authorization renewals is sidelining possibly thousands of foreign-born doctors, Axios' Maya Goldman reports.

🗓️ Visa holders have a grace period to keep working after applying for a renewal.

• But the freeze has scrambled arrangements, forcing doctors to take unpaid absences.
• Many immigrant doctors now have to return home, immigrate elsewhere or stay in the U.S. without working.

🩺 An Ohio-based doctor tells Axios: "Even with us, there is [a] severe shortage."

• "Can you imagine any physician loss, how it will impact the society here?"

Homeland Security told Axios the freeze is necessary because officials believe the Biden administration didn't properly vet affected visa holders.

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Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski tell me they've re-signed their "Morning Joe" contracts with MS NOW through the end of 2029.

• "Four more years! — as they say at conventions," Scarborough quipped.

Why it matters: They're two of the longest-serving co-hosts in cable news history and are top revenue- and conversation-drivers for MS NOW.

🌊 "Mika and I are excited to be staying with our 'Morning Joe' family and friends who have been watching regularly for almost 20 years," Scarborough told Axios.

• "We're also grateful for the vote of confidence [MS NOW President Rebecca Kutler and Versant CEO Mark Lazarus] have given us to stay with our 'Morning Joe' team over the next four years."

☕ Now entering its 20th year, "Morning Joe" is one of the most powerful platforms reaching policymakers and Washington insiders, Axios' Sara Fischer notes.

• President Trump watches, as well as Democratic leaders, media moguls, ambassadors, CEOs, university presidents and other newsmakers.
• The 6 a.m. ET franchise has become a multi-platform behemoth spanning live TV, streaming, a podcast and a newsletter.

Kutler told Axios: "We are about to celebrate 20 years of 'Morning Joe' — Joe and Mika have created something that cannot be replicated. As we build towards the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election, 'Morning Joe' will continue to be a singular destination for presidents and newsmakers from all political parties."

🫖 By the numbers: The show's daily newsletter, The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe, has accrued more than 116,000 free email subscribers since launching last October.

• The program is consistently one of the network's largest audience drivers on YouTube. The show's podcast is MS NOW's #1 most-downloaded daily audio program.

Amazon MGM's "Project Hail Mary" is taking off, with $80.5 million in weekend ticket sales and rave reviews from critics and audiences.

• 🚀 The Ryan Gosling-led sci-fi adventure, adapted from "The Martian" writer Andy Weir's 2021 novel, follows a scientist-turned-teacher-turned-astronaut sent on a mission to save Earth's dying Sun.

🎥 The $200 million-ish production doesn't have a single green-screen shot, co-director Christopher Miller says.

• Instead, it's an old-school exercise in practical effects.

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