The cost of borrowing money is moving unrelentingly higher, with profound implications for savers, borrowers and the U.S. government's fiscal outlook.
The big picture: The bond market moves over the last few weeks have pushed most risk-free interest rates north of 5%.
Barring a rapid reversal, expect pain to come in interest-sensitive sectors like housing, new stress on federal government finances and greater risks of financial disruption.
It is better news for savers, who have taken paper losses on existing bonds in recent weeks but can now deploy cash safely with the best prospective returns seen in decades.
OpenAI, Anthropic and security researchers are investigating tens of thousands of incidents in which their frontier models took steps that outside evaluators would consider problematic, sources told Axios.
Why it matters: The sheer number of incidents, which occurred in recent months in internal testing and the real world, indicates that the problem is orders of magnitude more complex than what is publicly known.
President Trump told voters to pretend he's on the ballot. Apparently they're listening: Republicans coast to coast are getting pulled under by a violent undertow fueled by Trump's unpopularity.
Why it matters: It's looked bad for Republicans all year, but this week felt different — like the political environment was disintegrating in real time, one ominous data point after another.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) has spent more taxpayer money on travel than any other senator's office since the fall of 2024 — including $625,000 on private charter companies, according to an analysis of public disclosures provided to Axios.
Why it matters: Senators routinely fly between Washington and their home states on taxpayers' dime. But only a handful regularly rely on private flights.
The U.S. and China have agreed to set up a dialogue on artificial intelligence, with a communications channel to help defuse serious incidents, the White House said overnight.
Why it matters: President Trump has said the main thing that matters in the AI race is beating China — but the pact acknowledges that they're serious competition, too.
The U.S. and China have reached a deal to lower tariffs on $30 billion of "non-sensitive goods" as part of a trade package agreed at this week's summit between President Trump and Xi Jinping, the White House said.
Why it matters: Such a deal would mark a thaw in the trade war that engulfed the two countries last year.
