Axios

President Trump told Hamas he will greenlight additional Israeli military strikes on Gaza unless the group releases its remaining hostages.

Why it matters: Trump's ultimatum comes during direct negotiations in Doha between his envoy for hostages affairs Adam Boehler and Hamas officials in an effort to reach a new Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal.

The Trump administration has been holding direct talks with Hamas over the release of U.S. hostages held in Gaza and the possibility of a broader deal to end the war, Axios' Barak Ravid scoops.

• Why it matters: The talks — held by U.S. presidential envoy for hostage affairs Adam Boehler — are unprecedented. The U.S. had never before engaged directly with Hamas, which it designated a terrorist organization in 1997.

Stocks were up today after the Trump administration gave automakers a one-month break from new tariffs on Canada and Mexico — following days of ups and downs as the tariff reality keeps changing.

• Businesses, investors and consumers are all yearning for some clarity, Axios' Ben Berkowitz writes. Instead they're getting a daily, if not hourly, drip of shifting information and conflicting priorities.

⏱️ It all started Monday, when President Trump promised tariffs were coming on Canada, Mexico and China. Stocks dropped.

• On Tuesday morning, he imposed the tariffs and stocks fell further.
• Later Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested on Fox Business that a tariff rollback could arrive today. Stocks rallied.

1. 🇬🇱 "We do not want to be Americans," Greenland's prime minister, Múte Egede, said today in response to President Trump's joint address, in which he reiterated his desire for the U.S. to acquire Greenland. "We are not for sale and cannot be taken." Go deeper.
2. 💻 Apple rolled out new MacBook Air models with a faster processor and a $100 price cut. Go deeper.
3. 📺 Tom Llamas will be the new host of NBC Nightly News, beginning this summer. The 45-year-old journalist began his career as an intern at Telemundo and became a senior national correspondent at NBC in 2021. He'll be the first Latino to host the weeknight broadcast. Go deeper.

Construction recently finished on the last home Frank Lloyd Wright ever designed — and it's available for overnight rentals, Axios Cleveland's Sam Allard reports.

• The three-bedroom, two-bathroom house, dubbed RiverRock, sits about 20 miles outside Cleveland.

📐 The backstory: Wright was commissioned in the 1950s to design a home overlooking the Chagrin River.

• Wright died in 1959, and the clients assumed the design died with him. But, "to their astonishment, the week of Wright's funeral, a mailing tube with drawings arrived" from Wright's studio, the RiverRock website explains.

Elon Musk and Republican senators are eyeing a package to claw back tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending after meeting in a closed-door lunch on Wednesday.

Why it matters: Musk has been leading the charge on spending cuts from the White House. Some lawmakers want to make his actions more permanent by making them law.

The White House on Wednesday doubled down on taking credit for the BlackRock deal to place Panama Canal ports under U.S. control.

The big picture: Panama President José Raúl Mulino on Wednesday accused President Trump of lying about his claim a day earlier that the U.S. is "reclaiming" the Panama Canal.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture must reinstate 5,900 fired employees for at least 45 days, per an order issued Wednesday by the Merit Systems Protection Board, an agency that handles federal worker complaints.

Why it matters: The Trump administration's mass firing of thousands of probationary federal workers has hit a series of legal speed bumps.

The Trump administration is easing the newly imposed tariffs on North American allies, with an auto sector carve-out that exempts the industry from import taxes for one month.

Why it matters: It offers temporary relief to a business that heavily relies on free trade with Canada and Mexico.

A team of volunteer archivists has recreated the Centers for Disease Control website, called RestoredCDC.org, as it appeared the day President Trump was inaugurated.

The big picture: A federal judge last month required the HHS to restore webpages and datasets that had been altered or taken offline to comply with executive orders that Trump issued on DEI and gender identity, but several links are broken and the pages are not easy to locate through web searches.

Florida's Rick Scott is carving out a unique role in the U.S. Senate as a top Trump fixer and liaison in Congress.

Why it matters: The White House is increasingly relying on Scott to help press Trump's agenda in the Senate and broker meetings between administration officials and key Republicans, according to senior White House officials.

Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Texas), a freshman from Houston sworn into Congress just two months ago, has passed away at 70 years old, two of Turner's colleagues confirmed to Axios.

What they're saying: "I'm just overwhelmed. When I heard it, I fell to my knees. I can't believe it," Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) said of Turner's passing in a phone interview.

LGBTQ+ youth across the U.S. continue to experience high rates of mental health challenges — yet they face significant hurdles to accessing mental health care, according to a new report from the Trevor Project.

The big picture: Even as the percentage of LGBTQ+ adults in the U.S. continues to climb — bolstered by younger generations entering adulthood — young people in the community face persistent high rates of bullying, discrimination and restrictive policies.

Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) is staring down multiple House Republican censure efforts after he was escorted out of the House chamber Tuesday for heckling during President Trump's speech to Congress.

Why it matters: Green's outburst kicked off a a night filled with Democratic disruptions and heckling — a level of chaos heretofore unseen at presidential addresses.

China vowed Tuesday that it is prepared for "any other type of war" with the U.S. after hitting back at the Trump administration's latest tariffs.

Why it matters: The tit-for-tat levies have put the world's two largest economies on track for a trade war while ratcheting up tensions between the superpowers.

The market's nerves were on full display Wednesday, as stocks whipsawed with every change in the narrative on the Trump administration's tariffs on Mexico and Canada.

Why it matters: Businesses, investors and consumers are all yearning for some clarity — instead they're being forced to endure a daily, if not hourly, drip of shifting information and conflicting priorities.

Europe's far-right leaders are divided over President Trump's approach to ending the Russia-Ukraine war.

Why it matters: Trump's embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin and coinciding about-face on U.S. assistance to Ukraine has caught even some of his reliable allies on the continent off guard.

Greenland's Prime Minister Múte Egede is not entertaining President Trump's mission to take the island "one way or the other."

The big picture: Trump for years expressed a desire to control Greenland, arguing it's necessary for national security purposes, and in January refused to rule out military force to seize the world's largest island.

The Supreme Court refused to halt a lower court ruling Wednesday that required the Trump administration to unfreeze some $1.9 billion in foreign aid payments.

The big picture: Wednesday's order from the highest court marks one of the first times the justices have intervened since Trump's return to the White House as a litany of legal cases involving his administration's policies move through the federal court system.

The U.S. will continue to suspend weapon supplies and intelligence sharing with Ukraine until a date for peace talks with Russia is set, White House national security adviser Mike Waltz said on Wednesday.

Why it matters: The U.S. decision to pause military aid is increasing pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to agree to move toward negotiations with Russia to end the war.

Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) was ejected from the House chamber Tuesday night after heckling President Trump during his speech before a joint session of Congress.

Why it matters: Green, long a staunch opponent of the president, was the lone Democrat removed from Trump's address to Congress after a display of defiance that became one of the night's viral moments.

President Trump showed some cards, played the hits, and played fast and loose with facts in Tuesday night's combative address to Congress.

Why it matters: There was energy news mixed into the campaign-style, 100-minute stream-of-Trump.

In this city of little political agreement, there's consensus on one big thing: President Trump is picking more fights, with more action than mere words, with more lasting consequences than anyone expected.

Why it matters: Turns out, Trump wasn't bluffing about imposing 25% tariffs, about pardoning Jan. 6 criminals, or punishing Europe, or rewarding Russia, or growing executive power, or gutting the FBI, or filling his Cabinet with loyalists, or penalizing the media, or taking a wrecking ball to government.

President Trump's joint address to Congress devolved, within minutes, into the nastiest partisan food fight in the history of this annual tradition.

Why it matters: It was Democrats, restless and indignant over the state of the country after six weeks of MAGA rule, who started the brawl. But it was Trump, reveling in the chaos and relentlessly on brand, who finished it.

More than 750 U.S. national park workers have been fired amid the Trump administration's purge of federal employees, per an unofficial tally shared with Axios by a park ranger.

Why it matters: The firings have left fewer workers to do critical jobs ahead of the busy summer travel season, including lifesaving search-and-rescue missions.

President Trump's taunting and tariffs have turned Canadians against the U.S., Prime Minister Justin Trudeau into a fire-breathing nationalist, and his Liberal Party — once on track for an electoral wipeout — back into a force to be reckoned with.

Why it matters: Trump has imposed big tariffs on the U.S.' closest ally and wants to make Canada the 51st State. Canada's response: a big middle finger to the USA.

Democrats protested President Trump throughout his presidential address to Congress in a variety of ways on Tuesday night.

The big picture: Democratic Women's Caucus members wore pink, other Democrats held up signs targeting Elon Musk for the DOGE-driven federal mass firings and Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) was escorted out of the House chamber for heckling Trump just minutes into the speech.

President Trump renewed his ask for more funding to carry out his immigration agenda, including border security and "the largest deportation operation in American history" during his address to Congress Tuesday night.

Why it matters: Trump's mass deportation plans are near-impossible to achieve without more money, which Democrats are likely to oppose. Trump Cabinet members, particularly border czar Tom Homan, have made a similar ask for weeks.

Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) slammed Elon Musk's DOGE team that's radically transforming the federal government during her rebuttal to President Trump's address to Congress on Tuesday.

Why it matters: In her brief remarks, Slotkin emphasized her bipartisan career history while emphasizing that "America wants change." She knocked the Trump administration's approach, adding: "There's a responsible way to make change and a reckless way."

President Trump used a joint address to Congress to double down on his commitment to being Tariff-Man-in-Chief — even as he acknowledged these taxes on imports would create a "little disturbance."

Why it matters: Trump's speech was long on promises — tariffs, reviving industry, expanding mining, egg prices — but short on detailed solutions for rising consumer costs and falling financial markets.

President Trump wants to will the country back into the "golden age" he promised on the campaign trail, the headlines be damned.

• "America's momentum is back. Our spirit is back. Our pride is back. Our confidence is back," Trump said in his first address to Congress of his second term.

Why it matters: This was a record-breaking 100 minutes of the world according to Trump — an address largely indistinguishable from a campaign-style speech. He recited the historic number of executive orders, touching every aspect of American life from immigration to sports.

Pakistan recently acted on CIA intelligence and detained a senior ISIS commander who the U.S. claims plotted the deadly Abbey Gate bombing during the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the issue. President Trump revealed the arrest in his address to Congress on Tuesday night.

Why it matters: Mohammad Sharifullah, one of the leaders of an ISIS branch in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is believed to have devised and coordinated the attack that killed 13 U.S. service members and about 170 Afghan citizens, one official said.

Even before President Trump took the podium to address a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, Democrats began disrupting the proceedings. Within minutes, a lawmaker was escorted out of the chamber.

Why it matters: The Democratic protests from inside the chamber represent an unprecedented level of coordination that reflects the immense grassroots pressure the party is facing to mount a resistance to Trump.

President Trump on Tuesday called for an end to people hundreds of years old collecting Social Security benefits — a claim his own administration has debunked.

Why it matters: Trump and his cost-cutters, like Elon Musk's DOGE, frequently make the claim in an attempt to justify the prospect of huge cuts to the Social Security Administration, if not the actual program itself.

President Trump used his platform before Congress on Tuesday to affirm the U.S. is "woke no longer" while promoting his blitz of executive orders since taking office six weeks ago.

The big picture: Early in his speech, the president cited symbolic actions he's made since taking office, particularly those pertaining to cultural and social issues dividing the country.

Many of President Trump's strongest allies, including family members and vocal surrogates during the campaign, appeared in the House chamber on Tuesday for his address to Congress.

Why it matters: Trump used his remarks to tout his accomplishments during his first six weeks in office, while some Democrats in the chamber took the opportunity to protest his administration's agenda.

Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) was escorted out of the House chamber on Tuesday for heckling President Trump during his address to a joint session of Congress.

Why it matters: It was a breach of decorum, followed by an unprecedented removal of a member of Congress from a presidential speech, that reflects Democrats' desire to show fierce resistance to Trump.

President Trump praised Elon Musk for his work on DOGE, which he said the billionaire "headed," during Tuesday evening's address to a joint session of Congress.

Driving the news: Musk was met with two standing ovations and protest signs during Trump's speech as he sat as a White House guest of first lady Melania Trump.

President Trump addresses a joint session of Congress Tuesday but it is not an official State of the Union address.

Why it matters: In Trump's first six weeks he has started a federal government overhaul, driven by DOGE, dismantled USAID and moved to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The right-wing House Freedom Caucus on Tuesday issued a threat to try to censure any Democratic lawmakers or guests who disrupt President Trump's speech to Congress.

Why it matters: The declaration is in response to Axios' reporting that some Democrats have considered bringing noisemakers or walking out of the speech to display their opposition to the Republican president.

The Senate on Tuesday voted on two measures to overturn crypto-related regulations inked late in the Biden administration.

Why it matters: Both regulations, the IRS' DeFi broker rule and a digital-payments rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, are viewed by the crypto industry as overly burdening and add crimps to financial innovation.

House Republicans are planning to pressure vulnerable Democrats to help them pass a short-term funding bill next week.

Why it matters: GOP leaders are talking big about passing a government funding bill with just Republican votes, probably in the House but definitely in the Senate.