Hamas released all 20 living Israeli hostages this morning as part of the Gaza peace deal brokered by the Trump administration, Barak Ravid reports.

• Why it matters: The Israeli hostages, most of them civilians, were held in captivity in Gaza for more than two years. Finally, all of the hostages who survived are now free.

The hostage release started shortly before President Trump landed in Tel Aviv, as part of a Middle East trip aimed at cementing his Gaza peace plan.

Under the agreement, Hamas had to release all 20 of the live hostages by Monday at noon local time.

• The first group of seven hostages was released shortly after 8 a.m. local time (1 a.m. ET). The hostages were transferred by Hamas to the Red Cross, which delivered them to Israeli forces inside Gaza.
• The other 13 hostages were released two hours later. Before the second group was released, Hamas militants connected them to their families in video calls and asked the families to share the calls with the Israeli press.

The hostages were taken to a military base outside the Gaza Strip to be reunited with their families, and from there to hospitals in Israel to receive medical treatment.

• The hostages all spent most of the past two years in underground tunnels, with very little food and water and almost no medical care for the wounds they suffered during Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks.

As part of the agreement, Hamas must also retrieve the bodies of 28 deceased hostages, among them two Americans: Itay Chen and Omer Neutra.

• Hamas claimed during the negotiations that it didn't know the exact locations of all the bodies of the dead hostages. In some cases, the group says, the militants guarding them were killed, or the bodies were buried under rubble.
• As part of the peace deal, a multinational task force has been established in order to share information on the possible locations of the deceased hostages and to conduct search operations inside Gaza.

In return for the release of the hostages, Israel will release 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences in Israeli jails — all but two dozen of the Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences in Israel.

• In addition, Israel will release 1,700 Palestinians who were detained by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza after Oct. 7.

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✈️ Taking questions from reporters on Air Force One en route Tel Aviv, President Trump declared: "The war is over. The war is over, OK? You understand that?"

📺 In early-morning coverage, Fox News changed its Chyron on the Hostages Square plaza in Tel Aviv to "FREED SQUARE."

President Trump told Barak Ravid in a phone interview from Air Force One en route to Israel last night that the Gaza peace deal "could be the biggest thing I was ever involved in."

• When asked his message for the Israeli people, he said: "Love and peace for eternity."

Trump said he'd watched parts of a rally for the hostages in Tel Aviv on Saturday. The speakers included his daughter Ivanka Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner and envoy Steve Witkoff.

• The president said he'd spoken to the three about it afterward. "It was an incredible rally. It was a great thing. Everybody is thrilled," he said.

🇮🇷 Trump claimed he wouldn't have been able to reach the deal in Gaza if he hadn't ordered the attack on Iran's nuclear facilities in June.

• Trump said Hamas was more willing to compromise after its Iranian backers were weakened. He added that lifting the "black cloud" around Iran's nuclear program allowed the Arab and Muslim countries involved in the talks to unite around getting a deal in Gaza.

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President Trump — addressing the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in Jerusalem today — called the ceasefire and return of the hostages "the historic dawn of a new Middle East."

• Nodding to his campaign promise to America, Trump said this will be "the golden age of Israel and the golden age of the Middle East."
• "Israel has won all that can be won by force of arms," he added in prepared remarks. "Now, it is time to translate these victories against terrorists on the battlefield into the ultimate prize of peace and prosperity for the entire Middle East."

🇮🇱 Speaking ahead of Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saluted "my friend Donald," drawing applause and chants when he said: "Donald Trump is the greatest friend that the state of Israel has ever had in the White House."

• "Overnight," Netanyahu added later, "everything changed — everything!"

🌐 In the motorcade en route to the Knesset, Trump brokered an invitation for Netanyahu to attend a peace summit in Egypt later today with senior officials from two dozen other countries, Barak Ravid reports.

• Netanyahu initially accepted after Egypt's president extended the invitation at Trump's request, a source said. Netanyahu later declined, citing a Jewish holiday.

Trump will head to Egypt from Israel for the summit.

An unusual and dramatic meeting last Wednesday between President Trump's envoys and Hamas leaders helped get the Gaza peace deal across the line, three sources with direct knowledge tell Axios' Barak Ravid.

• Why it matters: One barrier to a deal was that Hamas leaders feared Israel would resume the war once its hostages were freed.

In order to deliver a deal, one of the sources contended, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had to meet the Hamas leaders in person and directly assure them Trump wouldn't let that happen, as long as the group held up its side of the deal.

🔎 How it happened: A day earlier, Trump had privately granted permission for Witkoff and Kushner to meet Hamas leaders if necessary to seal a deal when they met in the Oval Office before the pair departed for Egypt.

• After arriving in Egypt, Witkoff informed the Qatari, Egyptian and Turkish mediators about Trump's green light.

On Wednesday night around 11 p.m. local time, the Qatari mediators went to Witkoff's villa at the Four Seasons, said there was a stalemate in the talks, and asked if the U.S. envoys were ready to meet Hamas, according to one of the sources.

• "We think that if you meet them and shake their hand there will be a deal," a senior Qatari official told Witkoff.

Behind the scenes: Several minutes later, Witkoff and Kushner walked into another villa at the Sharm el-Sheikh resort on the Red Sea.

• Arrayed inside were the Egyptian and Turkish intelligence chiefs, senior Qatari officials, and the four most senior Hamas leaders involved in the negotiations. The Hamas team was led by Khalil al-Hayya, who had survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Doha three weeks earlier.

In a meeting lasting around 45 minutes, Witkoff told the Hamas officials the hostages were now "more of a liability than an asset for you." It was time to move on with the first phase of the deal and "bring people home on both sides of the border," he said, according to one of the sources.

• Al-Hayya asked if Witkoff and Kushner had a message from Trump. "President Trump's message is that you will be treated fairly and that he stands behind all 20 points of his peace plan, and will make sure they are all implemented," Witkoff said, according to the source.

When the meeting ended, the Hamas leaders went to a separate room with the Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators. Several minutes later, Egyptian spy chief Hassan Rashad returned with his Turkish and Qatari counterparts.

• "Based on the meeting we just had, we have a deal," he told Witkoff and Kushner.

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Elon Musk made this milestone AI forecast during a remote conversation at the All-In Summit in LA last month. I finally listened to the session this weekend, and wanted to share Musk's forecast, which he made Sept. 9 from Tesla's global engineering headquarters in Palo Alto:

"I think that we might have AI smarter than any single human, at anything, as soon as next year. ... And then probably within five years — like, say, 2030 — probably AI is smarter than the sum of all humans."

YouTube (This quote at 31-min. mark).

Meta's hiring of Thinking Machines co-founder Andrew Tulloch is a sign that Mark Zuckerberg isn't done with nabbing big-name AI talent, a source familiar with the company's plans tells Axios' Ina Fried.

Yes, but: The source said Tulloch's pay package is less than both an earlier offer he turned down — as well as an earlier report of an offer that could have approached $1.5 billion, factoring in various incentives and a rise in Meta's stock.

Tulloch will join Meta's newly formed TBD Labs unit, headed by Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, the source said, although Tulloch's specific focus is not yet clear.

• Tulloch, a well-regarded machine learning expert who previously worked at Meta and OpenAI, has most recently been a key figure at Thinking Machines, the startup founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati.

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JPMorgan is planning a $1.5 trillion Security and Resiliency Initiative aimed at bolstering sectors critical to the U.S. economy over the next decade, including up to $10 billion in direct equity and venture investments, Axios Markets author Madison Mills writes.

• Why it matters: Details of the initiative rhyme with the Trump administration's goals for buoying domestic manufacturing.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said: "It has become painfully clear that the United States has allowed itself to become too reliant on unreliable sources of critical minerals, products and manufacturing — all of which are essential for our national security."

• "Our security is predicated on the strength and resiliency of America's economy. America needs more speed and investment. It also needs to remove obstacles that stand in the way: excessive regulations, bureaucratic delay, partisan gridlock and an education system not aligned to the skills we need."

The firm is building on a $1 trillion domestic initiative that was already in place, adding $500 billion and a focus on four key areas:

1. Supply chain and advanced manufacturing, including minerals, pharma and robotics.
2. Defense and aerospace.
3. Energy independence and resilience, from the grid to battery storage.
4. Frontier and strategic technologies, including AI, cybersecurity and quantum.

Read the announcement ... Share this story.

The Americans who own the most guns aren't hunters or veterans or cops — they're white evangelical Christians.

• Why it matters: Evangelicals also run major gun manufacturing companies, Axios copy editor Bill Kole, a former AP foreign correspondent, writes in a book out tomorrow, "In Guns We Trust: The Unholy Trinity of White Evangelicals, Politics, and Firearms."

Kole is an "exvangelical" who left the movement over guns and social issues.

• Progressive Christians are working to reclaim the narrative around God and guns by organizing buyback events and turning AR-15 rifles and other weapons into garden tools.

More on the book.