The only fight more hostile than Elon Musk vs. the federal bureaucracy may be Elon Musk vs. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Axios' Dan Primack and Ina Fried write.

• Why it matters: The victor could help determine the future direction of the world's most powerful technology.

Musk yesterday bid $97.4 billion to buy OpenAI's for-profit assets, which Altman is in the middle of cleaving from the company's nonprofit board.

• This is partly trolling, partly about upstaging the global AI summit in Paris, and partly about trying to slow down a strategic rival who has made recent inroads with President Trump.

⚡ Breaking: Altman told Ina this morning on the sidelines of the AI Action Summit that OpenAI isn't for sale — and particularly not to Musk.

• "There's been like versions of Elon trying to, you know, somehow take control of OpenAI for a long time," Altman told Axios. "So, it's like, OK, here's this week's episode."

🖼️ The big picture: Either way, Musk wins.

• At a minimum, he makes life difficult for one of his most bitter rivals.
• If Musk or xAI, his AI company, somehow end up with OpenAI's assets, which is extremely unlikely for a slew of reasons, then he wouldn't kick them out of bed, either.

Zoom in: It's unclear if Musk is offering more for the assets than Altman is. But it may not matter.

• OpenAI's board is mission-driven, meaning that it wouldn't necessarily have to take the most lucrative offer.

🐦 This is unlike what happened when Musk bid on Twitter, which was chaired by the exact same person who now chairs OpenAI's board (Bret Taylor).

🗯️ Altman was at a dinner in Paris when the news broke — having been seated near Vice President Vance — and tweeted: "no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want."

• Musk clapped back: "Swindler."

The intrigue: One of the first things President Trump did when he took office was to announce Stargate, intended to be a $500 billion effort to build infrastructure for OpenAI.

• Musk immediately bashed the project, one of Trump's early big wins, claiming none of the players had the necessary money.
• If Musk controlled OpenAI, it would further entangle his business interests with his new position in the government.

🇫🇷 Being there: News broke late enough Paris time that most people were at dinners and parties. The heads of state and CEOs were at Élysée Palace, the presidential palace. Second-tier execs and officials were at a foreign ministry event that featured robots (including an AI chef vs. a Michelin-starred chef).

• By the time the Musk news broke, people were dancing to house music as texts about Musk-Altman reverberated.

The bottom line: This episode is likely to become a footnote to the ongoing feud between the tech titans — but shows Musk's willingness to attack a company that Trump all but crowned as America's national AI champion.

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President Trump has signed more than 75 executive orders, memos and proclamations during his first 22 days in office — a far faster pace than his predecessors, Axios' Avery Lotz and Sareen Habeshian write.

• Why it matters: The executive actions reflect Trump's rhetoric on the trail — reducing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; cracking down on immigration; and formalizing "America First" foreign policy.

🥤 Yesterday, Trump signed an executive order ending federal purchasing and forced use of paper straws, saying they "don't work" and don't last: "We're going back to plastic straws."

• 📺 Jon Stewart said last night on "The Daily Show," to audience laughter and applause: "OK, he's right on this one! He is right on this one. Those straws are ... objectively terrible."

White House fact sheet ... Stewart clip.

• Go deeper: Tracking Trump's executive actions, category by category.

📜 Several legal scholars tell Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court for the N.Y. Times, that the U.S. is in the midst of a constitutional crisis, by the definition of "presidential defiance of laws and judicial rulings. It is not binary: It is a slope, not a switch. It can be cumulative." Gift link.

• Trump told Fox News' Bret Baier during his Super Bowl interview, discussing USAID and the work of Elon Musk: "I think judges will have to do the right thing, really. Otherwise, you're going to have a whole big problem with the country."

U.S. students are half a grade level behind pre-pandemic achievement levels in math and reading, Axios' April Rubin writes from the Education Recovery Scorecard — a report out this morning by researchers at Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth.

• Why it matters: No state showed improvements in both math and reading from 2019 to 2024, researchers found. High-income districts are four times more likely to have recovered.

📝 By the numbers: 17% of students between third and eighth grade are in districts with average math achievement above 2019.

• 11% are in districts that have recovered in reading, and 6% are in districts that have recovered in both reading and math.
• More than 100 districts — representing a small fraction of schools nationwide — performed above pre-pandemic levels in both math and reading.

🔭 Zoom out: Chronic absenteeism, which worsened during the pandemic, has started to show improvements, according to the report — but has slowed academic recovery, especially in high-poverty districts.

• Explore the data ... Read the release ... Share this story.

President Trump to Fox News' Bret Baier on whether he sees Vice President Vance as his automatic successor as the Republican nominee in 2028:

"No, but he's very capable. I mean, I don't think that it, you know — I think you have a lot of very capable people. So far, I think he's doing a fantastic job. It's too early. We're just starting."

✈️ Vance is using the AI summit in Paris and a security conference in Munich this week to make his vice presidential debut on the international stage.

• Watch Baier's Trump interview.

Today's AI users employ the technology more as a collaborator than as an autonomous helper, Axios' Scott Rosenberg writes from a new study of real-world AI use by Anthropic.

• Why it matters: The new Anthropic Economic Index is an ambitious effort to track the impact of AI adoption by directly analyzing anonymized data on how people are using Claude, Anthropic's chatbot.

The big picture: Today, only AI providers have a direct view of what people are actually doing with their tools. The more information AI makers share with the world, the better we'll be able to understand how the new technology is changing our lives.

• Anthropic said in a blog post that the study provides "the clearest picture yet of how AI is being incorporated into real-world tasks across the modern economy."

🧮 By the numbers: "AI use leans more toward augmentation (57%), where AI collaborates with and enhances human capabilities, compared to automation (43%), where AI directly performs tasks," Anthropic reports.

• AI adoption was widest among workers in "computer and mathematical" fields — chiefly, software engineering. 37.2% of queries sent to Claude were in this category, according to Anthropic.
• The next-largest category was "arts, design, sports, entertainment, and media" (10.3% of queries), which Anthropic said "mainly reflected people using Claude for … writing and editing."

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Over two-thirds of U.S. metros ended 2024 with higher unemployment compared to a year prior, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick writes from Labor Department data.

• Why it matters: The unemployment rate was higher in December 2024 compared to December 2023 in 266 of 389 metro areas (70%).

Dalton, Ga. (+3.5 percentage points); Asheville, N.C. (+2.6); and Muskegon, Mich. (+2.1), had the biggest increases in metro-level unemployment. Asheville was hit by historic flooding from Hurricane Helene in September.

• Kahului, Hawai'i (-2.2); Waterbury, Conn. (-1.7); and Bridgeport, Conn. (-1.4), had the biggest decreases. Maui, where Kahului is located, is recovering after devastating wildfires in late 2023.

🧤 The intrigue: Many of the worst-performing metros are in Michigan, perhaps due at least in part to a nearly 2% decrease in statewide manufacturing jobs in December 2024 compared to a year prior.

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Beware of traffic mayhem: Thousands of federal workers began going back to the office five days a week yesterday, Axios D.C.'s Cuneyt Dil and Anna Spiegel write.

• Why it matters: Feds are scrambling to revive old routines like carpooling as agencies begin enforcing President Trump's return-to-office order.

"Expect heavy traffic, delays, and limited parking," the Navy told its D.C. employees ahead of today, per a message viewed by Axios.

• There are 16,800 personnel and 10,000 vehicles expected to return to the 63-acre Navy Yard complex. But only 4,473 parking spaces, the message says.
• "Use public transit or carpool. Parking rules will be strictly enforced."

🚘 What we're watching: The possible return of pre-pandemic transit traditions.

• "Slugging," a decades-old hack favored by fed workers, is poised for a comeback. Under the symbiotic carpool system, solo drivers pick up strangers in need of a ride so they can use high-occupancy toll lanes to/from D.C. offices and the Pentagon.

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) with some Smart Brevity for Mara Gay, a member of the N.Y. Times Editorial Board, on what Americans want from Democrats right now:

"They want us to beat Trump and stop this sh*t ... And that's what we're doing."

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