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Trump's Gas Tax Plans & Europe's Jet Fuel Crisis

AI Hackers Are Here & The War Is Back On

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Marcus Gee-Lim
May 12, 2026

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Hi readers, happy Tuesday! Today we’re covering another painful Iran war update, Trump’s China trip, a double impeachment in the Philippines, Europe’s jet fuel crisis, Trump’s gas tax plans, a billion-dollar White House ballroom, and a milestone in AI hacking (not in a good way).

“If it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.” – Leo Tolstoy

And Just Like That, The War Is Back On

We headed into the weekend hopeful that the U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict would find some sort of resolution. But yesterday, President Trump dashed those hopes by saying that the month-long ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran is on “massive life support” and “unbelievably weak.” 

After the U.S. sent Iran a proposal to bring the conflict to a close late last week, Tehran responded with a counter-offer on Sunday. The offer would bring an immediate end to the war on all fronts, lift the U.S. blockade on Iranian points, guarantee that the U.S. won’t attack Iran any further, and re-emphasizes Iran’s sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. A foreign ministry spokesperson for Iran called the proposal “responsible” and “generous” (what a surprise!), but President Trump quickly panned the offer, calling it “totally unacceptable” and a “piece of garbage” that he “didn't even finish reading” (what a surprise!).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also made waves over the weekend in a 60 Minutes interview. The Israeli leader stated that the war with Iran can’t be considered over until Tehran’s store of enriched uranium is fully removed. “There's still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled,” he said, indicating that he’ll continue to push the U.S. to remain involved in the war. Oil prices bumped up 3% on Monday in response to all the bad news.

A Presidential Spring Break Trip

Later this week, President Trump is set to embark on a trip to China, which will see him visit Beijing on May 14 and 15. He’ll meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on both days, holding talks on trade, Taiwan, rare earth metals, and the Iran war.

Yesterday, Trump made a splash by inviting a whole army of CEOs to join him on the trip. The invite list (17 people long) includes Apple’s Tim Cook, Tesla’s Elon Musk, and Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon. Google, Amazon, and Nvidia were all snubbed – the White House says that it’s mainly focused on agriculture and aviation for this trip.

Trump is likely heading into the trip with the goal of scoring some easy diplomatic wins. Multiple sources indicate that the U.S. has already lined up deals for China to buy a series of Boeing jets and large quantities of American soybeans, and the two superpowers are working out more investment agreements as well as a wider consensus statement on AI development guardrails. Beijing, meanwhile, is likely angling to extend a trade truce between the two countries, and will also push for the U.S. to weaken some of its restrictions on technology exports to China.

Duterte Gets Double-Impeached

  • Following politics in the Philippines is like watching an insane TV drama. Yesterday, that drama got even crazier after the country’s House of Representatives impeached Vice President Sara ‌Duterte. This is the second time she’s been impeached during her time in office – the first time was blocked by a Supreme Court ruling, but this time around the impeachment case is headed to the country’s Senate, which will hold a trial to determine if Duterte will actually face the consequences of her actions.

  • The House impeachment complaint, which passed yesterday, accuses Duterte of misusing public funds, accumulating unexplained wealth, and threatening the lives of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, his wife, and a former House speaker. That’s right – the vice president of the Philippines has threatened to assassinate her boss, the president. The death threats are the result of an ongoing feud between the Duterte and Marcos families, the Philippines’ two political powerhouse families. Duterte was originally planning to run for president in 2028, but if she’s impeached she won’t be able to do so.

Europe Is Jonesing For Jet Fuel

  • The U.S.-Israel-Iran war is having very direct impacts on life in Europe. The conflict has shut down the Middle East’s ability to export jet fuel, which in turn has massively impacted the E.U. airline industry. That’s because jet fuel is a highly refined product, and the E.U.’s refinery capacity has been shrinking in recent years, forcing Europe to become one of the biggest importers of Middle Eastern jet fuel. The Strait of Hormuz closure has pushed up global jet fuel prices by more than half, leaving many airlines in an impossible economic situation, as jet fuel makes up roughly 25-30% of an airline’s operating costs. Analysts have been ringing the alarm bells about an impending fuel shortage for weeks at this point, and the war dragging on is only making things worse.

  • In order to stave off a larger jet fuel shortage, European airlines are now considering changing regulations to allow the use of American-made jet fuel. Normally, European planes use Jet A-1 fuel, which has a lower freezing point, allowing it to be used in colder climates. The U.S., meanwhile, only produces Jet A fuel. European regulators say that they might allow airlines to use Jet A as a stopgap, with some flights adding additives to change the freezing point of the fuel if necessary. “European fuel supply could come under pressure if the war in the Middle East continues. Using Jet A, which is produced at scale outside the Gulf, could be a practical way to help ease some pressure on existing supply chains,” said a representative for the International Air Transport Association.

Additional World News

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The War Must Go On … But This Tax Can End

  • Apparently, Trump has resigned himself to the fact that the war with Iran shows no signs of stopping. Yesterday, the president announced that he backs temporarily reducing the federal 18-cent gasoline tax in order to offer Americans some relief from sky-high gas prices. When asked about the possibility of suspending the tax entirely, Trump replied “Yeah, I'm going to reduce,” before adding that the suspension would be in place “till it's appropriate.” 

  • “Yup, we’re going to take off the gas tax for a period of time, and when gas goes down, we’ll let it phase back in,” he clarified. Reducing or removing the gas tax would require Congressional approval; Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, said that he plans to introduce a bill that would follow Trump’s plan in the next few days.

  • Since the U.S. and Israel launched the war with Iran, gas prices have jumped more than 50% – on Monday, average gas prices broke $4.50, a peak not seen since the Covid-19 pandemic. But it’s not clear that suspending the gas tax will help consumers all that much. “If the federal ⁠gasoline tax ​is suspended but the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, consumers will barely ​notice as pump prices continue to march higher,” said one energy expert.

The Billion-Dollar Ballroom

  • Republicans are marching forward with their $72 billion spending plan, which will fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection for the next three years. The GOP is looking to use a budget reconciliation to get the funding bill passed in the Senate – normally, legislation needs 60 votes to pass the upper house of Congress, but a reconciliation just needs a simple majority for approval.

  • While passing a three-year funding bill for federal agencies is already highly unusual (and will shield the agencies from political pressure), the immigration spending plan has Democrats upset for another reason. The bill sets aside $1 billion for the Secret Service – much of that money is slated to be spent on Trump’s push to renovate the White House’s East ballroom, “including above-ground and below-ground security features.” White House plans indicate that those features will include bomb shelters, military installations, and an underground medical facility beneath the ballroom. 

  • “We will force vote after vote to make the choice unmistakable: will Republicans vote to help American families – to lower costs, to restore savage health care cuts, to roll back cost-spiking tariffs – or will they vote to fund Trump’s gaudy ballroom?” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who’s vowed to fight the immigration spending bill in every way possible.

Additional USA News

 

AI-Hacker-Doomsday Is Here

  • Yesterday, Google announced that its cybersecurity researchers had identified and stopped a zero-day exploit developed with help from AI. Zero-day exploits are security flaws unknown to a software program’s own developer which have no known fixes, meaning attackers have all the time in the world to leverage them to inflict maximum damage. 

  • According to Google, the vulnerability would have allowed a group of “prominent cyber crime threat actors” to bypass two-factor authentication in an “open-source, web-based system administration tool.” The would-be hackers planned to use the vulnerability to carry out a “mass exploitation event.”

  • Google researchers said they could tell that the attackers used AI to code the exploit because the Python script used in the hack featured a “hallucinated CVSS score” and “structured, textbook” formatting that you’d expect an LLM to spit out. The tech giant released its report on the attack as fears of AI-powered cybersecurity attacks are on the rise. Just a few weeks ago, Anthropic announced that it wouldn’t be making its Mythos AI model available to the public as its programming capabilities are apparently too powerful to fall into the hands of hackers.

Additional Reads

Peanut For Your Thoughts

I can only take so much whiplash from this war 😭

Editor + Writer: Marcus Gee-Lim

Designer: Joe Stella