The Brief

Los Angeles is set to host the next Olympics in 2028, and some local lawmakers think the city is running out of time to prepare. The City Council is now pursuing a plan that would remove the typical development hurdles for projects related to the games.

But anti-gentrification advocates and urban planning experts want to pump the brakes on Olympics project fast-tracking, saying the developments could harm neighborhoods long after the 2028 games are over.

A proposal put forward by Councilmembers Traci Park and Adrin Nazarian calls for exempting Olympics-related projects from all planning department “approvals, zoning regulations, and conditions” that could “delay or impede the rapid deployment and or use of essential facilities.”

If passed, the exemption could apply to a wide array of developments, including “temporary and permanent venues, training facilities, security perimeters, broadcast and media centers, transit infrastructure, live sites and fan zones and associated structures.”

Council members say deadlines are tight

With the opening ceremony slated for July 14, 2028, some council members believe there isn’t enough time for such projects to go through the city’s typically lengthy review and approval process for new development.

Earlier this month, the proposal was unanimously approved by the Planning and Land Use Committee.

Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who chairs the committee, said in that meeting, “The ‘28 games are rapidly approaching and for the next three-and-a-half years we’re going to have to make a lot of decisions without perfect information.”

‘What are the priorities?’

But the idea of fast-tracking projects for the Olympics, which L.A. was chosen to host in 2017, has been criticized by anti-gentrification advocates and urban planning experts who say the city’s priorities are out of whack.

“We have a homeless crisis — a housing crisis,” said Maria Patiño Gutierrez, a policy director with the nonprofit Strategic Actions for a Just Economy. “Now this motion is going to instead streamline certain types of projects that are aimed for the Olympics. What are the priorities of the City Council?”

Patiño Gutierrez said she worries that the proposal’s broad language could end up fast-tracking luxury hotels in neighborhoods of South L.A. close to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, one of the future Olympics venues. The result, she said, could accelerate demographic shifts that have priced out lower-income renters.

UCLA urban planning professor Chris Tilly said L.A.’s program to fast-track 100% affordable housing projects has been revised multiple times to ban streamlined approvals of low-income apartments on most of the city’s land.

“There are some actions the city is taking that has said, yes, affordable housing is a priority — but both in this sort of Olympics fever and in, unfortunately, a lot of the discussion of rebuilding after the fires, I feel like affordable housing needs to be a much bigger part of the discussion,” Tilly said. “It's not getting the attention that it really needs.”

The promise of a ‘no-build games’

L.A. last hosted the Olympics in 1984. Many venues from those games will be used for the 2028 events, and some organizers have pointed to existing infrastructure to say impacts on the city will be minimal.

Janet Evans, the chief athlete officer for the L.A. 2028 organizing committee, told the Associated Press last year that the upcoming L.A. Olympics would be a “no-build games.”

The City Council was scheduled to vote on the proposal to exempt Olympics projects from review on Friday, but the item was delayed one week. LAist reached out to the offices of Park and Nazarian to ask about why the vote was postponed, but did not receive a response.

Helen Campbell, the planning director for Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez’s office, submitted written comments earlier this month urging the committee to request a report back from city officials and delay moving forward on the proposed ordinance.

“We need to first understand the universe of projects that would be expedited under such a provision and the unintended short and long term consequences upon our communities that this might impose,” Campbell wrote. “We also would like clarity on how a project may potentially be reclassified as an Olympics related project seeking to bypass regulations meant to safeguard communities.”

Eleven weeks into the Iran war and a global energy shock, California drivers are paying the highest gas prices in the nation, an average of $6.15 a gallon this week.

The pain at the pump is colliding with California’s ambitious push away from fossil fuels, as refinery closures, supply disruptions and a deepening debate over reliance on imported oil and gas raise new questions about whether the state can keep gasoline affordable during the transition.

Here are five things to know about how Sacramento is responding to the crisis and what it could mean for prices in the months ahead.

California can see six weeks out — after that, prices could rise.

California can confidently forecast gasoline and crude oil shipments coming in through about mid-June, and supply looks stable through that window, Siva Gunda, vice chair of the California Energy Commission, told an Assembly oversight hearing last week.

After that, oil and gas will cost significantly more to secure, he said.

California can outbid the rest of the world for gasoline and crude oil, pulling shipments away from Asia and other markets. But that bidding war comes at a cost, and consumers will pay it at the pump, Gunda told the committee.

To hedge against that uncertainty, Gunda said California is negotiating long-term supply deals with Asian refiners that could lock in another three to six months of certainty.

“Liquidity, in the short-term, is okay,” Gunda said. “As we move forward, it's really about making sure more ships are coming, more marine vessels are coming.”

As refineries close, imports are filling the gap.

The Iran war has exposed California’s growing reliance on imports of both crude oil and gasoline. The state needs to import more supply as in-state refineries shut down.

Neale Mahoney, a Stanford economist, told the committee that imports can be a benefit. They add competition and lower prices, since newer overseas refineries often produce gasoline more cheaply than California's.

Other experts agree. UC Berkeley energy economist Severin Borenstein, also at the hearing, said California's resilience now depends on building out port, pipeline and storage capacity to handle imports, not on bringing new refineries online.

As the war has dragged on, California refiners have shifted crude sourcing away from the Persian Gulf toward Latin America, Alaska and Canada, Gunda said at the hearing last week. The state met about 20% of its refined-product demand through imports in the year before the war began.

“Fundamentally, we have to recognize we are going to have fewer refineries, and the solution is imports,” Borenstein said.

The oil industry says imports are the problem, not the answer.

But the oil industry is pushing back, saying that relying on increased imports is the wrong strategy. California's fuel system has been "weakened by design" by state policies pushing refiners out of the state, said Jodie Muller, president and CEO of the Western States Petroleum Association — a characterization energy economists dispute.

Because California requires that cars burn a specialized fuel blend, shipments can be tougher to source and take longer to arrive, exposing consumers to delays and volatility every time something goes wrong globally.

“Continuing to move to more and more imports will put this state at more and more risk,” Muller said last week. “If you think we are in a precarious position right now, we will continue to see more and more volatility.”

And the oil industry argues that the playing field is tilted. California refiners face some of the strictest rules in the world, the industry argues, while imported gasoline is produced under far weaker standards before it’s shipped halfway around the world. California requires importers to certify their fuels meet its standards, but the industry argues that foreign producers operate under less stringent environmental rules.

$6.50 or $7-plus? Experts can't agree.

In the end, what you feel most acutely is the price you pay at the pump. And even the experts aren't sure where things will land.

Asked what consumers should expect if the conflict drags on, Gunda said California prices will likely settle "under seven, more like $6.50." He explained that demand starts dropping once gas crosses about $5.50 a gallon, and California is already seeing drivers shift from higher-priced stations to cheaper ones.

Borenstein is less optimistic. If the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that carried more than 20 million barrels of oil a day before the start of the war, stays closed another 60 days, the price of crude could climb by another $40 to $80 a barrel, he said. Each $40 increase translates into about $1 per gallon at the pump. He called that scenario plausible, and warned there's almost nothing California policy can do about it.

“Unfortunately, I think that would be a crisis,” Borenstein said. “I know we all hope that doesn't happen and that the flow of oil resumes, but the reality is we are on borrowed time as we run down inventories.”

Will high gas prices boost EV sales?

California has spent years trying to push drivers out of gas cars. Now sky-high gas prices may be sparking interest in some consumers.

EV sales in California slumped last year after the Trump administration revoked a key federal tax incentive, undercutting California’s plan to steadily replace gas-powered cars with electric ones to meet its climate goals.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is now pushing to revive some of those sales through a new state incentive under negotiation in the budget. It’s too early to know whether pain at the pump is translating into a broad rebound in EV demand. But some consumers are already making the switch.

When gas prices recently climbed past $6 a gallon in Redding, Victor Ireland said his daughter decided there was “no way” she wanted a gas-powered car after watching the family spend more than $140 on a single Sacramento round trip in their minivan.

The search wasn’t easy. EV inventories have dropped across the country since expiring federal tax credits briefly boosted demand. The family searched dealerships across the West, from Washington to Kansas, after his daughter settled on a specific model: the Fiat 500e Giorgio Armani Collector's Edition. They found a dealer in Utah that could ship the vehicle to California.

Ireland said the soaring cost of gasoline only reinforced his family’s decision. “You just charge it and go,” he said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took the stand on Tuesday to defend himself against accusations from co-founder-turned-adversary Elon Musk that he "stole a charity" by converting the maker of ChatGPT into a for-profit juggernaut.

The trial, now in its third week, pits two of the tech world's biggest personalities against one another in a high-stakes clash that could usher in major changes for one of the world's leading artificial intelligence companies and potentially alter the AI landscape.

Musk's lawyers made the case that OpenAI, Altman and OpenAI president Greg Brockman, with the help of investments from Microsoft, jettisoned OpenAI's founding mission of being a non-profit focused on creating advanced AI for the benefit of humanity. Instead, the Musk team argues that they enriched themselves by creating a for-profit subsidiary that now effectively controls the nonprofit.

OpenAI's legal team has argued that Musk is motivated by sour grapes and is out to damage a competitor. And on the stand Tuesday, Altman pushed back against the notion that Musk actually cares about OpenAI.

"Mr. Musk did try to kill it," he said, adding that Musk launched a competitor called xAI, tried to poach its talent, and alleged that he engaged in "business interference."

The dispute goes back nearly a decade to when the founders of OpenAI — including Musk — decided they needed to create a for-profit entity in order to attract top talent and raise big money to develop competitive AI technology.

Musk, who donated $38 million to OpenAI early on, wanted control of the for-profit; the other founders were against it.

On the stand, Altman testified that the co-founders felt no single person should control AGI, or artificial general intelligence, and that Musk was not a good fit for the company.

Musk left the board in 2018, and Altman called that a morale boost for employees who did not like his "hardcore" approach.

The trial has opened a rare window into the machinations of some of Silicon Valley's most ambitious tech entrepreneurs as they debated the future of AI and wrangled over investment plans and control of OpenAI. It would go on to become a global leader in AI thanks to the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.

OpenAI's lawyers have drawn on once-private text messages and emails to try to paint Musk as power-hungry and initially supportive of plans for the for-profit to attract huge investments. The OpenAI team also tried to undermine Musk's credibility by highlighting messages that appeared to show that he tried to poach talent from OpenAI before he left the company's board, and was kept appraised of its decisions after leaving by then-board member Shivon Zilis, who is the mother of four of Musk's children.

Musk's lawyers, meanwhile, have tried to make the case that Altman and Brockman were intent on reaping personal profits from OpenAI despite its original nonprofit mission. OpenAI's nonprofit still exists, and owns the for-profit entity, now valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars. But Musk argues that it has been sidelined.

While cross examining Altman, Musk's attorney Steven Molo tried to undercut his credibility, asking if he was trustworthy. "I believe so," said Altman. When Molo asked Altman if he always told the truth, Altman replied: "I'm sure there are some times in my life when I did not." Asked if he had been called a liar by business associates, Altman said: "I have heard people say that."

If the United States District Court for the Northern District of California finds Altman, Brockman and Microsoft liable for Musk's two civil claims — "breach of charitable trust" and "unjust enrichment" — Musk has asked for them to "disgorge" up to $150 billion to the nonprofit entity.

He is also seeking the unwinding of the for-profit and wants Altman and Brockman removed from their leadership roles. That could radically reshape OpenAI and potentially undercut its AI development efforts.

Closing arguments are on Thursday, and a decision from an advisory jury and the judge overseeing the case, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, are possible next week.

Rachael Myrow, Senior Editor of KQED's Silicon Valley News Desk, contributed to this story from Oakland, Calif.

Microsoft is a financial supporter of NPR.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Updated May 13, 2026 at 08:19 AM ET

President Trump has arrived in China, a state visit that was initially delayed by the war with Iran.

But the war is not in the rear view mirror as he had hoped. The ceasefire with Iran is "on massive life support," as Trump put it Monday and the conflict is in an unsteady and uncertain holding pattern.

"It is remarkable that President Trump is prepared to go to China under these circumstances," said Kurt Campbell, chairman of The Asia Group and a top Biden administration adviser on China. "But may I also say that it's also deeply unusual that China is prepared to host him."

China and Iran are close allies and trading partners, and the U.S. has just spent weeks bombing Iran and is now blockading all ships connected to Iran. Meanwhile, there are questions about whether China has assisted Iran. And yet, the state visit is moving ahead as planned.

"It suggests that both believe they have interests in meeting," said Campbell. "And I think part of that is a desire to keep a relationship that is fraught and challenging with a degree at least of equilibrium."

A senior U.S. official not authorized to speak publicly said a better question would be "why would [Trump] not continue" with this trip and all the other duties that he has as president.

Grand ceremonies and grand gestures are on the agenda along with trade talks and the possibility of creating a "U.S.-China Board of Trade" to manage what has been a challenging relationship between the two countries. They may also discuss AI technology, the official said, at least to establish "some channels of deconfliction."

When Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping last fall in South Korea, the two leaders turned down the temperature on what had been an escalating trade war.

"From zero to 10 with 10 being the best, I would say the meeting was a 12," Trump said on Air Force One after the meeting, where plans were made for this state visit.

"I said but 'we have to put on the biggest display you've ever had in the history of China,'" Trump said at a meeting of world leaders in Washington earlier this year. He was building hype for this visit. "You know the last time I went to China, President Xi, he treated me so well."

Trump's schedule includes a welcome ceremony, two bilateral meetings with Xi, a state banquet, a tour of the Temple of Heaven and a tea in a whirlwind less than 48 hours on the ground.

More than a dozen big name U.S. corporate executives, including Apple's Tim Cook and Tesla's Elon Musk, are traveling as part of the delegation.

"The American people can expect the president to deliver more good deals on behalf of our country," said Anna Kelly, the White House deputy press secretary, on a call previewing the trip. "These agreements will further rebalance trade with China while putting American workers, farmers and families first and safeguarding U.S. economic strength and national security."

Iran war's influence

When this visit was put on the books last fall, the focus was on keeping the trade truce between the two countries going. And that is still on the agenda, but now there's this pressing new global challenge.

"I do think that this war will dominate the summit," said Lyle Goldstein, director of the China Initiative at Brown University. "Let's face it, it will push a lot of other things off the agenda. I mean, if for no other reason … Trump is focused on it because he wants it off his desk as it were."

Iran's foreign minister recently went to China and met with his counterpart there. And China is credited with helping to push Iran to accept the initial ceasefire, the one Trump said is now on life support. Lyle says he could imagine Trump asking Xi to help pressure Iran to re-open the Strait of Hormuz and make a deal to end the war.

This inevitably changes the dynamic between Trump and Xi headed into this high stakes visit.

"The war in Iran has given President Xi sources of leverage that he would not have anticipated having at the beginning of this year," said Ali Wyne with the International Crisis Group.

For instance, he said the U.S. will need rare earth minerals from China to rebuild its supply of missile interceptors depleted by the war.

To hear Trump tell it, the war with Iran hasn't affected his friendly relationship with Xi. And when there have been questions about China possibly assisting Iran in the war, Trump has downplayed those concerns.

"He's somebody I get along with very well. Just wrote me a beautiful letter," Trump told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo in a recent interview.

Trump said he had prompted the correspondence with his own letter to Xi asking him not to supply weapons to Iran after there had been reports of China doing just that.

"And he wrote me a letter saying that essentially, he's not doing that," Trump said.

Although China is a major customer of oil from Iran, it has been somewhat insulated from the economic shock from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Potential deals

While other presidents scolded Xi about human rights and warned him to leave Taiwan alone, Trump has long expressed an admiration for Xi and the power he wields within China.

"It's not just hyperbole but the president is his own China officer," said Dennis Wilder,a professor at Georgetown University who was a top adviser to President George W. Bush on China policy. "And he believes he understands Xi Jinping, he believes he can negotiate good deals with China."

There are widespread expectations that China will announce plans to purchase additional soybeans and other farm goods as well as Boeing airplanes. There's also talk of a process to formalize the trade truce between the two nations.

But Melanie Hart, the senior director of the Global China Hub at the Atlantic Council says there are still meetings happening this week to lay the groundwork for Trump's trip.

"Everything is still in flux, at this point, normally at least the economic deliverables would be nailed in. That is not the case," she said. "So this is going to be evolving up until the last minute."

The White House has said a U.S.-China Board of Trade, even if agreed to, couldn't be finalized immediately. It would require both countries to do more work to establish such a body.

And Wilder points out, this is just the first of four potential meetings between Trump and Xi this year, including a planned state visit for Xi to the U.S. in the fall.

"What we're seeing here is the setup for a year of intense dialogue to try and reset to a certain degree, the U.S.-China relationship," said Wilder.

That relationship is now vastly different than it was when Trump first visited China as president nearly a decade ago. Back then, the International Crisis Group's Wyne said China put on a big display to convince Trump and the U.S. that it should be seen as America's confident and capable competitor.

"This time around in the run up to the meeting between President Trump and President Xi, the Chinese side doesn't have to make that case because U.S. officials are making that case themselves, beginning with President Trump," said Wyne.

The White House national security strategy document, released late last year, describes China as a "near peer," while the two nations remain locked in a long-term competition for global dominance.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Solar developers say they’re facing crippling losses and potential bankruptcy amid a stall in a state-funded solar power program.

California’s “self-generation incentive program,” or SGIP, was reworked in 2024 to help low-income households install solar and battery-storage systems for free.

But SGIP has been plagued by delays, bureaucracy, poor communication and stalled payments, according to five developers LAist spoke with. Small developers say they’ve been hit especially hard by a lottery system that they argue favors larger developers.

And customers who stood to benefit the most from free installation of solar and battery storage — low-income households in the hottest and most fire-prone areas of the state — are in limbo, waiting months for the bill savings and energy reliability they were promised ahead of what is expected to be a record-hot summer.

The issue highlights the challenges to expanding access to clean energy as fossil fuel pollution continues to accelerate climate change and is another hit to an industry that has faced significant setbacks in recent years from changes to state-level rooftop solar programs and the Trump administration’s cuts to clean energy incentives.

How we got here 

The state has offered incentives to large electric customers to install battery-storage systems since the energy crisis of the early 2000s. The latest version of the SGIP program aims to prioritize qualifying low-income residents.

In 2024, the state allocated $280 million in state funds to install solar and batteries for free on qualifying homes and apartments. The program is administered through the state’s investor-owned utilities and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. It officially launched last summer.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work: Developers identify projects they can take on, then apply for funding via a first-come-first-served reservation system. If requested funds exceed the total funding, then a lottery is triggered. If their project is approved, the developer does the work and covers the upfront costs of the installation with the understanding they’ll get paid back through SGIP within a year.

What’s happening in LADWP territory?

Solar panels dot the parking area at the DWP building in downtown Los Angeles.

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Lawrence K. Ho

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Getty Images

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As soon as the SGIP program launched last June, large developers quickly flooded the application system.

Sunrun, one of the nation’s largest solar developers, submitted applications requesting as much as 97% of the total funds available in Los Angeles Department of Water and Power territory, according to public data reviewed by LAist. (Sunrun declined to be interviewed for this story. LADWP didn’t agree to be interviewed about the breakdown of applications.)

LADWP said it is in the process of reviewing the 451 applications it received. So far, DWP officials have approved one: $28,000 for a single-family home project, the utility told LAist.

Smaller developers told LAist they’re concerned that there is no cap on how much any single developer can receive through the program. General market versions of SGIP not targeted for low-income properties have developer caps of 20% of the incentive funds, according to the program’s handbook.

“The purpose of the program, I believe, is not to just enrich the biggest players or to allow them to have free project financing,” said Aaron Eriksson, owner of Escondido-based Solar Symphony Construction, which applied for projects in LADWP territory. “We all got kind of left out in the cold on that one.”

Robert Cudd, a research analyst with UCLA who has studied SGIP, said the program does incentivize developers lining up as many projects as possible ahead of time to “claim the largest possible share of that rebate pool.”

That’s often the case for similar programs that aim to serve low-income customers.

The state “is agnostic about who is doing this work,” Cudd said. “They just want to accelerate the energy transition.”

Only a few large companies — including Sunrun and GRID Alternatives, as well as growing startup Haven Energy — have developed specialized expertise in these kinds of complex programs that have higher upfront costs.

Small companies on the brink 

Delayed reimbursements have developers worried about projects in the works and about new paperwork requirements.

In February, the California Public Utilities Commission — five governor-appointed regulators who oversee the program — abruptly paused SGIP. In their ruling, they said that projects submitted varied widely in costs, with many exceeding incentives “significantly.”

The ruling flagged discrepancies such as the same wall battery reportedly costing as low as $8,600 and as high as $21,000. So the CPUC decided to require developers to submit additional receipts and documentation of their costs.

But developers LAist spoke with said only a fraction of applications were at the state’s predicted costs. The developers argue costs have gone up due to inflation, tariffs and cuts to clean energy tax credits. Projects serving low-income households also often require upgrades because of the buildings’ age.

Joshua Buswell-Charkow, deputy director of California Solar and Storage Association, a trade organization that represents more than 70 companies that participate in the SGIP program, said work is already underway in some cases.

“Some of our contractors are out literally millions of dollars right now,” he said. “ I'm worried that we're going to have folks go out of business because of this.”

That could be the case for Eriksson’s company, Solar Symphony. More than 100 of the company’s applications to install solar and battery systems at no cost to qualifying customers were approved by Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. Now, Eriksson said, they don’t know if they’ll be paid for projects they’ve already installed.

“We were very excited by the potential to deliver truly no-cost, home-sited solar and batteries to California ratepayers,” Eriksson wrote in a statement to the public utilities commission. “The regulators effectively induced us to commit under one set of rules; we accepted and delivered — and now the terms are changing.”

Eriksson told LAist he could be out of business by June if the state doesn’t release the payments.

Other companies have indefinitely paused installing systems approved by program administrators.

“We've signed contracts with hundreds of low-income families. We've purchased the equipment,” said Vinnie Campo, co-founder of Haven Energy, one of the state’s largest SGIP installers, at a Public Utilities Commission meeting in late April. “Our crews are ready to install, but systems sold in good faith to customers … are sitting in warehouses instead of on homes.”

Seven representatives of solar companies, including a lawyer representing multiple companies in Southern California, expressed their concerns at that meeting.

Lionel Rodriguez of Glendale-based Solar Optimum was one.

“Many people are hurting,” Rodriguez said, “and it's destroying the integrity of our company and also the customer's trust.”

In early May, in response to such concerns, the Public Utilities Commission released another ruling saying administrators can start paying developers when certain documentation has been submitted but that they still could audit any company that receives funds. Meanwhile, utilities have until the end of June 2028 to spend the funds, or else they’ll be returned to the state’s general fund.