As inflation rates rise to their highest in years, Californians are again getting hit the hardest at the gas pumps, with a regular tank costing upwards of $100 at some stations in Los Angeles.

Inflation figures released this week show consumer and producer price rises at more than three-year highs, driven by the energy crisis stemming from the war with Iran.

Gasoline prices took the biggest bite out of consumer spending power, with prices up 41% in May from a year earlier.

While the national average for gasoline prices is a little above $4 per gallon, in California, it is near $6 per gallon. In a small number of gas stations in Los Angeles, it is even tipping toward $7.

When asked about inflation in the Oval Office on Wednesday, President Trump told reporters the numbers looked great.

“I love inflation,” Trump said. “The numbers are going to be phenomenal because what’s showing is that despite the fact that we’re in a war, the numbers are much lower than anticipated, and when we’re out of that war, the numbers will be at lower numbers than they were even before it started.”

Consumers aren’t feeling the love.

The Costco gas pumps in Inglewood were busy Thursday morning, with a constant flow of cars looking to save money on its relatively low per-gallon price of about $5.50.

Inglewood resident Eddin, who chose to not give his last name, said even though his Honda Civic isn’t a big gas guzzler, he has switched to using his girlfriend’s hybrid for longer trips.

“We just take her car now just because it’s more cost-effective,” he said as he filled his tank. “I wish there was more the government could be doing for not just gas prices, but for prices in general. It seems like prices have gone up for everything.”

The unforgiving prices at the pump are set to make everyone’s summer more expensive. After gas, the largest price rise for consumers was in airline tickets, which jumped 27%.

Even staying home doesn’t shelter shoppers — the beef they might want to put on their backyard barbecues is up 15%.

Virginia resident Mario, who also opted to not give his last name, got hit twice with the inflation tax as he left Los Angeles this week. He was paying more to refill his rental as he headed for a flight home, after having paid much more for the ticket than earlier in the year.

“All of the flights are way more expensive than they used to be,” he said as he paid almost $5.80 per gallon at the 76 on Century Boulevard near Los Angeles International Airport.

The average price for a gallon of gas is around $3.90 in Virginia.

While the surge in prices is happening around the world, gas costs more in California than almost anywhere else because of higher taxes, fees and cleaner-fuel requirements.

The state’s gas supply is also particularly vulnerable because it has lost much of its drilling and refining capacity in recent years, making it more dependent on fuel from other states and countries.

As gas prices continue to climb in L.A., locals are forced to adjust their lives to the price at the pump. For some, that includes cutting back on other necessities such as food, budgeting strictly to afford half a tank of gas a week and rethinking side hustles such as food delivery service.

Public transit has become a more favorable option for some — weekday commutes on the Metro increased by nearly 8% from January to May.

Recent reports have shown a decline in spending on expensive household goods, and credit card data show that both luxury and discount shoppers spent less than usual recently on lodging, groceries, clothes and theaters to accommodate a larger gas budget.

Another Inglewood native who opted to not give her last name, Liz, is putting off filling up her gas entirely because it is so expensive. Instead, she makes more frequent visits, putting a little gas in her car at a time.

“I have to budget and do half a tank now, and half a tank later, or ask for an advance on my paycheck just to get gas,” she said.

Most people at the pumps agreed: Something needs to change.

Wayne Faulkner is from Los Angeles but now lives in Indiana, where gas is about $3.50 per gallon. He complained as he filled up his rental at the LAX stand.

“Our gas situation is much better than here,” he said.

Anthropic PBC has disabled access to its most advanced artificial intelligence models, including Mythos, following an unprecedented order by the Trump administration to keep the technology out of the hands of all foreign nationals.

The U.S. government told Anthropic to suspend access to the Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models by any foreign national “whether inside or outside the United States,” citing national security concerns, the company said in a statement.

A U.S. official confirmed that the Commerce Department sent the letter. The model developer has since shut off access to both systems to all customers to ensure compliance.

Never before has the U.S. government taken such sweeping measures to rein in foreign access to frontier AI models developed by an American company. The Trump and Biden administrations have limited access abroad to other consequential technologies such as semiconductors and supercomputers, and some have debated the merits of blocking access to AI models. But restrictions on the software itself have raised constitutional and commercial concerns.

Anthropic said it believes the U.S. government issued the order after discovering that it’s possible to “jailbreak,” or bypass the guardrails, of Fable 5, a recently released version of Mythos that the company blocked from carrying out cybersecurity tasks.

“We disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people,” Anthropic said in its website post. “If this standard was applied across the industry, we believe it would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers.”

Researchers at Amazon.com Inc. had conducted jailbreak research that revealed some vulnerabilities in Anthropic’s model, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Amazon and the U.S. government were in contact about the vulnerability before the controls were imposed, according to people familiar with matter who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy was involved in those exchanges, one of the people said. The Information reported earlier that Jassy raised concerns to senior U.S. officials.

An Amazon spokesperson said it’s not uncommon for governments to consult with the company on security risks, but declined to share details of any such discussions.

The government’s move to so widely restrict access to a set of AI models in the name of national security threatens to set a precedent for all major AI model developers including OpenAI, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Meta Platforms Inc. Industry leaders such as Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have in the past encouraged the US government to instead promote worldwide adoption of American AI systems and protect the nation’s lead.

“For anyone who was naive and perhaps hoping that this leverage wouldn’t be exerted, it’s a massive wake-up call,” Aidan Gomez, the co-founder of Cohere Inc., a Nvidia Corp.-backed AI startup, said Saturday in an interview. “No one can deny it any more.”

Anthropic said it received the government order at 5:21 p.m. New York time on Friday. The end-of-day directive runs counter to earlier statements, as well as an executive order recently signed by President Trump, which suggested the administration wouldn’t pursue a licensing regime for model reviews.

Friday’s directive also threatens to escalate long-standing tensions between Anthropic and some within the Trump administration. Earlier this year, the AI developer clashed with the Pentagon over the use of its technology for military and surveillance purposes. The administration declared the company a U.S. supply-chain risk as a result of the blowup and ordered U.S. agencies to phase out the use of its products.

Privately held Anthropic, which has long positioned itself as a more responsible AI developer, first released its Mythos model in April to a very limited group of companies and institutions, warning that its ability to find cybersecurity vulnerabilities made it too risky to distribute more widely.

There were signs that the limited release was working to ease tensions between Anthropic and the Trump administration: In April, the U.S. government was preparing to make a version of Mythos available to major federal agencies, Bloomberg previously reported.

Mythos also accelerated the Trump administration’s efforts on AI policy, which included the recent executive order that called for voluntary model review. That order explicitly said that nothing in it should be construed as creating a mandatory licensing regime.

David Sacks, Trump’s former AI czar and current co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, said that Anthropic refused to fix a jailbreak of the guardails in its Fable model.

“The Admin’s hope now is that Anthropic remediates the safety issue, the export control is lifted, and Fable goes back into general release,” he wrote in a post on X. “The Admin wants all of this to happen as soon as possible. It is frankly bewildered that Anthropic hasn’t wanted to comply with safety requests that it previously said were its highest priority.”

The latest government restriction is colliding with a race among U.S. developers to deliver the most advanced AI models and prove to their investors that the technology can turn a profit. Both OpenAI and Anthropic are seeking initial public offerings as soon as this year, following SpaceX’s own historic IPO.

The rush to deliver the most cutting-edge AI models spurred Anthropic itself to post a lengthy blog earlier this month, calling for the creation of a system in which governments and AI developers collectively decide when to slow work on the technology to stave off the risks it may pose.

“It would be good for the world to have the option to show or temporarily pause” AI work that may be dangerous, the company said in the post at the time. AI is advancing to the point where the technology can make human work thousands of times more efficient or even replace it, creating a new set of risks, the company said.

The European Union’s executive arm said that it’s assessing Anthropic’s statement and is continuing to talk to allies about the potential risks and cybersecurity concerns related to powerful new AI models. The European Commission added that the latest developments underline Europe’s need for technological sovereignty.

‘“s a person in the field, I’m not particularly thrilled to see this,” said Cohere’s Gomez. “I don’t think this is partnerly, I don’t think this is the right thing to do for the broader technological alliances that have developed over the course of the past 80 years.”

Eastland and Lowenkron write for Bloomberg. With assistance from Shirin Ghaffary, Yi Wei Wong, Gian Volpicelli, Spencer Soper and Thomas Seal.

Los Angeles has one of the deadest downtowns in the world, according to a new survey.

Out of 75 of the top cities around the world, L.A. ranked among the lowest for vibrancy in Gensler’s 2026 City Pulse report released this week.

Around 65% of those surveyed found DTLA vibrant compared to more than 80% vibrancy scores for New York, Chicago, Sydney and Shanghai.

The urban planning and consulting company surveyed 35,000 city residents on how they ranked their city for a variety of statements. Los Angeles ranked 20th-lowest globally and 11th-lowest among 34 U.S. cities in vibrancy.

Downtown Los Angeles needs more people to return to downtown to work, shop and eat if it wants to boost its scores, said Kelly Farrell, the managing director of Gensler’s L.A. office

“L.A.’s kind of central problem is that businesses have left L.A. We need them to bring the offices back in,” she said. “Bring the people back in so they’re staying after work and interacting with those businesses that are in the area.”

While there are pockets of downtown that are thriving and local residents say life is improving, Los Angeles’ downtown suffers from an image problem that is weighing on how it is perceived.

Gensler’s report highlights key factors that contribute to a thriving downtown area. Downtowns should have a blend of shops, offices, and housing, walkability, and a role as a cultural and entertainment hub.

Despite its status as the city’s historic seat of government, finance, arts and sports, downtown L.A. has experienced a trend of offices leaving post-pandemic, leading to fewer visitors and the remaining stores and restaurants struggling.

The Los Angeles Office of Finance showed that the number of businesses reporting leaving downtown has increased greatly over the last two years, following a lull post-pandemic. Similarly, downtown has accounted for a growing share of overall exits from the region in the last five years.

According to a Times data analysis, downtown has regularly accounted for the highest number of closures. Among the neighborhoods hit the hardest by closures, South Park, the Fashion District, Central City and Pico-Union had the highest number of closures from 2024 to 2025. Nearly 40% of the office space in the Financial District is functionally empty, and 30% of retail space is vacant, according to CBRE.

Another important factor is whether or not people linger there. Rather than the number of visitors, Gensler said in the report, the amount of time spent downtown matters more in cultivating a thriving downtown area.

L.A. has consistently struggled to get locals back into downtown in recent years.

Perceived safety issues downtown are one major reason businesses are leaving downtown, and locals won’t go there.

Vandalism, assaults and robberies downtown have driven businesses out, and a noticeable lack of police presence makes people reluctant to return. Still, Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Kelly Muniz said in April that crime is down 10% from last year.

Gensler’s L.A. director says that as people flood back into downtown, crime will continue to decline.

“One of the best things we can do for safety is have an abundance of population,” said Farrell. “You will see right now that we have a lot of great ground-floor retail that’s empty. As that gets fuller, we typically see that crime starts to go down with it.”

Farrell said results can change dramatically between each year of the survey, and as L.A. sees more offices return to downtown, perception of vibrancy will increase with it.