A month into the Iran war, American consumers are caught in three levels of pain, Axios' Neil Irwin writes:

• ⛽ Energy prices are surging — the national average for gas is poised to top $4/gallon, up from $3 just a month ago. (This morning, it's $3.976.)
• 🏠 Interest rates are on the rise, pushing up the cost of borrowing for everything from mortgages to car loans.
• 📉 The stock market has erased $3.2 trillion in value since the war began — down more than 7% from its January high.

Why it matters: Americans desperately want day-to-day life to be more affordable. That's not happening — at least, not in the near term.

• "Consumers are tired of high prices," Richmond Fed president Tom Barkin said in a speech yesterday. "They're deferring purchases, trading down, and moving down to lower-priced retailers and private label."

The international OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) projects U.S. inflation will reach 4.2% this year — up from a pre-war forecast of 3% in December.

• That's lower than the inflation rate reached in 2022, the peak of the post-pandemic supply chain snarls, and the impact of the Ukraine war.
• 👀 A 4% surge would come on top of five consecutive years of elevated inflation; consumer prices are up 25% since December 2020.

💼 The job market is weaker now than it was in 2022, with less hiring and smaller pay increases to help offset higher costs.

• The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index fell to 53.3 in March — its lowest rating since December — with nearly half of respondents spontaneously citing prices as a strain on their finances.

State of play: The prospects of higher inflation and higher government borrowing have fueled sell-offs in stocks and bonds — depleting household wealth and making it more costly to borrow to buy a home.

• The S&P 500 is down nearly 7% so far this year. Stock market wealth has helped support overall consumer spending, especially among the affluent.
• A month ago, the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage slipped to under 6% for the first time in three years. Now it's back up to 6.64%.

👀 The other side: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent argued at President Trump's Cabinet meeting this week that critics "underestimate the will of the American people for short-term volatility, for 50 years of safety that we are going to have on the other side of this."

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OpenAI spent the last year trying to be everything — a video platform, a shopping portal, even a purveyor of AI erotica.

• Now it's racing to become a thing that makes money, Axios' Megan Morrone writes.

Why it matters: The company that defined the AI consumer boom is acknowledging it overextended — and that less sexy business customers are more valuable than viral moments.

• Anthropic's surging revenue in recent months has shown where the real money is: enterprise users who want to generate text and build armies of agents to 10x their productivity — not engage in erotic chatbot play.

🖼️ The big picture: OpenAI's decision to shelve ChatGPT's "adult mode" marks its third consumer retreat in recent days.

• On Tuesday, the company shuttered its viral video app Sora — blowing up a $1 billion Disney partnership in the process.
• Earlier this month, OpenAI scaled back Instant Checkout, its in-chat shopping feature.

Between the lines: ChatGPT has 900 million weekly active users and 50 million consumer subscribers. The company is clearing the decks for a massive IPO and needs to turn those millions of users into paying customers.

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EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio when the U.S. would get tough on Russia during a G7 ministers' meeting in France yesterday, sparking a sharp retort, Axios' Barak Ravid reports from three sources who attended the meeting.

Why it matters: The tense exchange, which took place in front of allied foreign ministers, was symptomatic of the mutual distrust between the U.S. and many of its European allies over the war in Ukraine.

🔎 Behind the scenes: During a discussion of Ukraine, Kallas — a Russia hawk and former prime minister of Estonia — criticized the U.S. for not increasing pressure on Moscow, according to the sources.

• She noted that Rubio had said at the same forum a year earlier that if Russia hampered U.S. efforts to end the war, the U.S. would run out of patience and take more steps against the Kremlin.
• "A year has passed and Russia hasn't moved," Kallas told Rubio, according to the sources. "When is your patience going to run out?"

Rubio was visibly annoyed. "We are doing the best we can to end the war. If you think you can do it better, go ahead. We will step aside," he fired back, raising his voice.

• Rubio said the U.S. was trying to talk to both sides, but was only helping one side, Ukraine, with weapons, intelligence and other support.

A State Department official told Axios: "It was a frank exchange of views. This is what diplomacy is for."

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Above: 1,000 pyrotechnic drones fly over Oracle Park in San Francisco, forming a smoky American flag during the national anthem at MLB's Opening Night on Wednesday.

• The display was a collaboration with Netflix for the streaming platform's first-ever live baseball game.

See another angle.

🖊️ Situational awareness: TSA workers should begin seeing paychecks as soon as Monday after President Trump signed an executive action to pay them while the Homeland Security funding impasse continues. Read the memo.

Record-long TSA lines have fueled new demand for line-sitters — people paid to hold your spot so you can avoid the misery, Bloomberg reports.

• Steven Dial of Houston charges $65/hour plus $6/hour for parking. He had a full day of bookings within 24 hours of posting on social media, with his longest shift — three hours in line — netting $213.
• Jimmy Payne started offering the service as a joke, but his inbox was soon flooded with real requests.

Keep reading (gift link).

Organizers expect today's No Kings Day rallies — with more than 3,000 events planned across all 50 states — to be the largest single-day protest in American history.

• Last June's inaugural protests drew more than 5 million people. October's sequel topped 7 million.

Keep reading.

Tiger Woods was released on bail late last night after being arrested near his home on Jupiter Island, Fla., on suspicion of DUI. Just before 2 p.m. ET, his Land Rover clipped a truck and rolled onto its side, AP reports.

• The 50-year-old has been working his way back to golf from a seventh back surgery in September. He'd been trying to decide if he was fit enough to play the Masters, which starts April 9.

Woods, who wasn't injured, had been traveling at "high speeds" on a residential road, and was lethargic and showed "signs of impairment" after the crash, Martin County Sheriff John Budensiek said.

• President Trump — whose former daughter-in-law, Vanessa Trump, is dating Woods — told reporters: "I feel so badly. He's got some difficulty ... Very close friend of mine. He's an amazing person. Amazing man. But, some difficulty."

How it happened: Investigators believe Woods had taken some type of medication or drug. The sheriff said Woods agreed to a Breathalyzer test, which showed no signs of alcohol. But he refused a urine test, then was arrested.

• The sheriff said Woods tried to pass a pressure-cleaner truck while driving on a two-lane road with a 30 mph speed limit. Authorities couldn't determine how fast Woods was going.

The Land Rover swerved to avoid a collision while passing the truck but clipped the back end of the truck's trailer. Woods' car rolled onto its driver's side, and he crawled out.

• Because Woods refused the urine test, as is his right, authorities "will never get definitive results with what he was impaired on," the sheriff said.

The backdrop: This is the fourth time Woods has been involved in a car crash, most recently in February 2021 when his SUV ran off a coastal road in L.A. at high speed, leading to multiple leg and ankle injuries.

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In the downstairs workshop of a bungalow in the Atlanta suburb of Decatur, Jack Brantley and Kyle Turner keep accordions from across the country bellowing and droning, Axios Atlanta's Thomas Wheatley writes.

Why it matters: Brantley and Turner run Accordionology, a two-person, appointment-only business with decades of combined experience repairing and restoring the niche instruments.

• "We are the only full-service accordion shop in the entire Southeast," Brantley, who lives upstairs with his wife and dogs, told Axios. "There are a couple of folks who do repairs in their woodshed. But in terms of having new Italian instruments and a full selection — this is it."
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