President Trump flew to Beijing today under some of the darkest economic clouds of his political career, departing a country reeling from the cost of everyday life, Axios' Zachary Basu writes.

• Why it matters: The bottom is falling out on Trump's economic credibility — the central promise of his return to power. The inflation crisis that doomed his predecessor suggests he may not recover.

A new CNN poll found that 70% of Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy — a benchmark that never crossed 50% in his first term, even during the pandemic.

• 77% of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, say Trump's policies have driven up the cost of living in their own community.

For now, Trump appears unconcerned, convinced that renewed inflation is temporary and that gas prices will plummet once he ends the Iran war.

• Asked before departing for China whether Americans' financial struggles were motivating his push for a deal with Iran, Trump replied: "Not even a little bit."
• "The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran is they can't have a nuclear weapon," he added. "I don't think about Americans' financial situation."

🖼️ The big picture: The affordability crisis that fueled Trump's return to power has become a five-alarm threat to his presidency — even as GDP growth, largely thanks to the AI boom, remains strong on paper.

1. Prices are surging: Inflation spiked to 3.8% in April as the Iran war pushed the national average price of gas above $4.50 a gallon.

• Economists fear the energy shock is beginning to ripple through the broader economy, pushing up the cost of groceries, airfare and electricity.

2. Paychecks are shrinking: Yesterday's inflation report showed that prices are outpacing wages for the first time in three years, erasing gains in real purchasing power.

• American households have absorbed a nearly 30% rise in consumer prices since the pandemic — a cumulative wound that has never fully healed, Axios' Courtenay Brown reports.

3. Debt is mounting: Americans are increasingly leaning on credit cards and loans to absorb rising costs, with consumer borrowing posting its biggest monthly jump in March since late 2022.

• The personal savings rate fell to 3.6% in March, its lowest level since 2022, as lower-income households burn through savings to cover essentials.

4. Confidence is collapsing: Consumer sentiment has cratered to record lows as Americans grow pessimistic about the economy and their own financial futures.

• A new YouGov/Economist poll found 59% say the economy is getting worse, while just 15% say it's improving. More than two-thirds of Americans say the country feels "out of control."

5. Main Street is souring: The National Federation of Independent Business says optimism around future business conditions and expansion plans has fallen to its lowest level since before Trump's reelection.

• Small businesses are often treated as an economic early-warning system because they're especially vulnerable to rising fuel costs, tighter credit and weakening consumer demand.

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Chris Lehane, OpenAI's chief global affairs officer, fears the rising risk of unpopular AI and told us the solution might be a reorg of government and business. He offered two megapoints in a conversation with Axios CEO Jim VandeHei yesterday at OpenAI's new office in Washington:

1. The AI companies and government are so interdependent — the companies need light regs, contracts; government needs AI systems — that it might require a new public-private hybrid to manage them.
2. The AI companies could get crushed by bad politics if they don't find ways to share any wealth they create, much like Alaska shares oil & gas revenue with its residents. "People need to feel like they're gonna have a piece of this and participate in it," Lehane said. "You can't talk beyond people or above people. You need to talk with people and involve them in the conversation."

More broadly, Lehane says we're entering a new chapter of AI, where it becomes an "infrastructure technology … a utility for intelligence."

• With electricity, he said, "people began to understand that if I could plug something in and build something off of that, I could do incredible things."
• He said OpenAI aims to build "an intelligence that's accessible, that's cheap and that's abundant. So that as many people as possible — not just the few, but the many — can actually build things off of this."

Watch a "Behind the Curtain" video. (Executive producer: Jimmy Shelton)

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Classified intelligence assessments from earlier this month indicate that "Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities," the N.Y. Times' Adam Entous, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan report.

• Why it matters: "The findings undercut months of public assurances from President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who have told Americans that the Iranian military was 'decimated' and 'no longer' a threat," The Times notes.

The assessments say there's evidence that Iran restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz.

• They suggest Iran has retained roughly 70% of its prewar missile stockpile and 70% of its mobile launchers.
• It has regained access to about 90% of its underground missile storage and launch facilities.

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Americans — especially young adults — are increasingly unlikely to socialize with neighbors living feet away, Axios' Josephine Walker writes.

• In 2012, 51% of young Americans regularly engaged with neighbors, according to a new AEI report. Today, that number has plummeted to 25%.
• Across all ages, 59% of Americans chatted with neighbors a few times per week in 2012 — a number that fell to 40% last year.

💡 What happened: Daniel Cox, lead report researcher and director of the Survey Center on American Life at AEI, tells Axios that technology deserves some of the blame.

• "In the previous generation, if you sat around your apartment long enough, you started to go stir-crazy, and that would often compel people to go out," he said.

Keep reading … Read the report.

A former girlfriend of Rep. Thomas Massie accused him this week of offering her $5,000 to drop a wrongful termination complaint against his close ally, Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), Axios' Marc Caputo and Kate Santaliz write.

• Why it matters: Cynthia West's accusation surfaced a week before Massie's May 19 primary.

President Trump is targeting the Kentucky Republican in what has become the most expensive U.S. House primary in history.

• West said she didn't coordinate or communicate in any way with Trump's political operation or the campaign of Massie's primary opponent, Ed Gallrein.
• West said Massie's offer involved cash he had previously given her during their relationship, and that she later returned to him.

🔭 Zoom in: West told Axios she broke her silence because she resented Massie for speaking about the need for transparency when it came to releasing the Epstein files — even as, she alleges, he attempted to silence her with cash.

• Keep reading.

Disagreement among administration officials and a time crunch with President Trump's China summit stalled efforts to launch a federal response to the next frontier of AI, Axios' Ashley Gold writes.

• Why it matters: Weeks after Anthropic's most advanced model, Mythos, threw Washington for a loop, there's still no new federal AI regulation.

🔬 Zoom in: Early talk of federal safety reviews has slowed as administration officials made clear they aren't on the same page.

• A tech industry source told Axios the administration may wait for the outcome of the China summit before making any final decisions on AI.

There's a tug-of-war over where advanced AI testing should happen — in the more "civilian" space of the Department of Commerce or in the national security side of the government, another tech industry source told Axios.

• Keep reading.

Former NBA center Jason Collins — the first openly gay active player in any of America's four major sports leagues — died at 47 after an eight-month battle with an aggressive form of brain cancer.

• He had been diagnosed with Stage 4 glioblastoma, which has an extremely low survival rate.

Collins spent 13 years as a player in the league for six franchises. He revealed he was gay in 2013, toward the end of his playing career.

• He wrote at the time: "If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I'm raising my hand."

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Hacky sack — until now a symbol of stoners in the '90s — is suddenly roaring back with Gen Z, starting with high schools in the Northeast and rapidly spreading across the country.

• Jason Gallagher, headmaster at Boston Latin, told The Boston Globe: "I've never seen something explode as quickly as this."
• "Overnight, the hashtag #spreadsacknothate was trending, and a flood of Massachusetts high schools suddenly had student-created social media pages for their 'sack team,'" the Globe reported.

The N.Y. Times found stores from North Carolina to California that reported a boom in hacky sack sales.

• Online, hacky sack has become an elaborate inside joke, with hundreds of accounts cheekily treating the game as a varsity sport.
• In Massachusetts, the boom spawned an unofficial "Hacky Sack Rankings" Instagram page that's ballooned to 96 schools in weeks.

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