CRUDE AWAKENING

Donald Trump’s ideas for lowering gas prices are becoming increasingly insane, as he fails to find a way out of economic disaster.

• Everyone seems to be freaking out about the potential for artificial intelligence to erase humans from existence — but President Donald Trump thinks he’s already got it figured out. “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote on social media. As one colleague wrote in our company Slack: “we r fucked.”

• With the possibility of Robot Doomsday not weighing him down (apparently), Trump is focused on another crisis: rising oil prices. A gallon of gas now costs an average of $4.31, while diesel will run you $6.23. Crude also surged to $109 per barrel.

• A pair of mind-boggling new proposals show that Trump is panicking, and has absolutely no clue how to bring down costs.

• Consider Ukraine. Even though the high oil prices are his own fault due to the war in Iran, Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to fix the problem. The country’s military has seen major success with recent strikes on some of Russia’s largest oil refineries that sit hundreds of miles from the border. These attacks are massively important, since Moscow’s oil production props up its entire economy.

• But Trump urged Zelenskyy to knock it off — and accused him of exacerbating the oil crisis. “Let him go after targets but not diesel fuel, because he’s causing a shortage of diesel,” Trump told reporters over the weekend. “This isn’t done by the Middle East; this is done by what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine.”

• One Ukrainian politician I spoke with dismissed the demand: “It’s completely ridiculous. He thinks it’s the oil prices that we should be thinking about, not our people.”

Trump’s other solution to lower prices? Stay in Iran even longer.

• The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed (the main source of high oil costs) and talks to reopen the route were just postponed. There’s no indication that the war will end anytime soon, so Trump is threatening to escalate even further.

• “We’ll ultimately get out, ​unless ⁠we decide to stay and keep the oil like Venezuela,” Trump told reporters. Shortly after that, however, Trump contradicted himself, claiming that oil prices will “drop like a rock” when the war ends, which “will not be long.”

• That’s the same tune that Trump has struck for the entire war with Iran, which he initially said would last only a few weeks. Twenty-eight weeks later, the midterms are fast approaching, and the president’s team still hasn’t come any closer to ending the conflict or bringing costs down.

“Price increases throughout America were caused by Sleepy Joe Biden,” Trump posted today.

WHAT ELSE? 👀

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and MAGA godfather Steve Bannon will co-headline a conference that will advocate for putting humans in control of AI, amid the recent doomsday predictions. “The oligarchs are finally being forced to admit they’ve lied from the beginning about the dangers of acceleration with zero guardrails — they’ve put the nation and mankind in jeopardy,” Bannon told Axios. What A Day will be reporting from the scene in D.C. tomorrow. Stay tuned!

If AI might kill everyone, why are tech companies still building it? That’s the question Crooked’s Jon Favreau explored in his latest episode of Offline with journalist Max Fisher. Check out this timely conversation and become a Friend of the Pod! (Our podcasts and newsletters are much better than any created by robots, I promise.)

A Russian oligarch linked to dictator Vladimir Putin footed much of the bill for Don. Jr.’s extravagant, multi-day wedding in the Bahamas earlier this year, according to ProPublica. “It was really small, like, just really close friends,” the president’s son once explained on a podcast. A spokesperson for Don Jr. didn’t dispute the payments, telling the outlet that the oligarch is “a personal friend.” Hilariously, a spokesperson for Eric Trump said that he “has absolutely no clue who this person is, nor has never heard his name.”

A 40-year-old woman became the third person to die in Pennsylvania after contracting the measles, health officials announced.

Officials at the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center in Florida failed to meet federal detention standards, according to a report by a government watchdog. One disturbing revelation: The detention center used small metal cages as “calming areas” for detainees, which are photographed in the report.

The Trump administration plans to stop limiting how much pollution power plants can blast into the air by burning fossil fuels. “They are swinging from the fences to try to prevent any administration from regulating one of the largest sources of emission for the United States,” Carrie Jenks, executive director of the Environmental & Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School, told the New York Times.

LIGHT AT THE END… ☀️

Scientists in Virginia are toying with the idea of shooting so-called “power beams” down from satellites in space, with the goal of powering solar panels even at night. It’s a far-fetched idea, but if it works, solar energy could become a much more lucrative alternative power source.

Oprah Winfrey felt inspired after seeing U2 perform at The Sphere in Las Vegas to use the immersive venue for her own show. For three nights next April, Oprah will host guests and performances, including musician Jacob Collier and poet Ocean Vuong. The Sphere could be used to “allow people to go deeper for themselves and walk away with a sense of awe and wonder about what it means to be alive,” Oprah said.

Everyone say happy birthday to Pope Leo! As part of his special day, Leo repealed a covid-era policy that slashed salaries for Vatican employees. Fun fact: Leo was a math major and recently helped his brother with a question about filing taxes. What a guy.

Chinese billionaire Justin Sun is at the center of a bizarre (and super entertaining) drama in his home country: Did he pay a movie star’s family $4.5 million to marry her? While Sun has made headlines for weird publicity stunts (he ate a $6.2 million banana), he claimed that this marriage story isn’t true. But the public thinks it might be real, after the billionaire filed a lawsuit to get his money back. I need a Netflix documentary about this guy ASAP.

Cricket is becoming increasingly popular in Scotland, as locals turn the famously snobbish game into a more relaxed, casual game. One pub, which hosts a team that plays on a beach, provides beers during water breaks, and umpires dress in shorts and flip flops. Forget pickleball! This is a sport I could really get into.