Trump is playing down any need to check the development of artificial intelligence, saying he doesn't want America to give up its edge over China in a global competition. He dismissed the idea of new AI guardrails on Monday, saying there is a ‘SICK conspiracy’ against AI and data centers.
And another federal judge has ordered the U.S. Postal Service to stop implementing President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting mail balloting as the Supreme Court prepares to weigh in. The ruling late Sunday adds another obstacle to Trump’s effort to rewrite election rules as Americans prepare to vote.
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Trump EPA is to eliminate limits on power plants’ planet-warming gas emissions
The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to repeal limits on planet-warming air pollution from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas. Administrator Lee Zeldin has said this would remove billions of dollars in costs for the industry and help “unleash” American energy.
The rule change, proposed last year, could be announced as soon as Monday, according to two people familiar with the proposal, and represents a fundamental shift from efforts by Democratic Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama to address climate change and clean up industrial pollution, often in low-income and majority Black or Hispanic communities.
The rule, which is expected to face immediate legal challenges, also could prevent future administrations from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, the people familiar with the proposal said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the rule had not yet been made final.
The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
— By Matthew Daly
Trump says he alone is enough to contain rogue AI
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump posted on social media.
The president specifically said his administration has already stopped the AI company Anthropic “from doing bad, or potentially bad” things.
Trump pushed back against calls by tech leaders at Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft and others to have greater regulation of AI to ensure it is developed in ways that promote safety, address legal liability and preserve national security. He’s opposed such efforts and claims doing so could cause China to eclipse America on AI development.
“There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China,” Trump said.
Congress races to address questions over AI
House Speaker Mike Johnson says it’s time for Trump to “summon everyone together” and take the lead at the White House, rather than Congress.
“I think we need to go in a big room, close the door, and sort this out,” Johnson said over the weekend on CNN.
The Republican speaker is close to Trump, who has downplayed the risks over AI, and Johnson shied from Congress taking action.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said his party puts a “high priority” on action and will address the bipartisan proposal for a so-called AI “Kill Switch” during their Tuesday caucus meeting.
“We should take decisive action now,” Jeffries said on ABC.
JD Vance says Americans should not be scared of AI
The vice president told reporters Monday morning that there are risks to any technology, but “I don’t think Americans should be scared of anything.”
Vance said the Trump administration is concerned about AI but wants to make sure it’s regulating the technology smartly.
“Personally, I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them. It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse,” Vance said. “So I think we just have to be careful about this.”
Schumer asks Trump administration for classified briefing on AI risks
As technology leaders have issued warnings in recent days, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer says Congress should get a “full accounting” of how the Trump administration is working to put guardrails around testing for AI models, what it is doing to prevent American technology from flowing to China and how the U.S. would defend itself against the potential for increasingly sophisticated AI-enabled cyberattacks.
“Warning bells are ringing louder than they ever have – and the Trump administration is looking the other way,” said Schumer, D-N.Y. If the Trump administration does not act, “then Congress must.”
White House calls Trump’s actions on voting common sense
“The only ‘fears’ Americans have about our elections are being fueled by extreme liberal Democrats who refuse to support commonsense legislation that ensures Americans, and Americans only, decide our elections and other basic election security measures like Voter ID,” spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in a statement.
Litigation about election rules has reached such a pitch that the National Bar Association announced a hotline to help voters who encounter trouble casting ballots amid last-minute changes.
Every election, the two major parties mobilize massive operations of attorneys, staffers and volunteers to monitor polling places and ballot counting. The Republican National Committee said it’s already recruited a record number of poll watchers.
“We’ve built the largest election integrity operation in Republican Party history because our mission is simple: secure every legal vote and ensure Americans can trust the outcome of our elections,” RNC spokeswoman Ally Triolo said.
Trump has given Democrats plenty of reasons to organize a resistance
Law professor Rick Hasen, who directs UCLA’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, said it’s important not to unduly scare voters about what might happen, but it’s “hard to walk the line between alarmism and complacency.”
During his first term, Trump refused to accept his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden and attempted to overturn the vote, only to be defied by career officials and more establishment Republicans. He’s stocked his second administration with people who helped his 2020 efforts, used the federal government to target his political enemies and pardoned more than 1,000 people prosecuted for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that was intended to halt the certification of Biden’s win.
Trump demanded Republicans redraw House maps to create more safe seats for themselves, held last week’s unusual midterm convention and has tried to change election rules even as states begin to send out ballots.
Democrats, activist groups plan response to midterms interference
Democratic state parties announced their “New Battlefield Project” on Monday, an effort to recruit 10,000 volunteers to guard polling places in case armed federal officers show up.
Activists are planning mass protests if the Trump administration tries to interfere with voting or ballot counting. And legal scholars are distributing white papers advising judges how to respond if the government tries to seize ballots.
The unprecedented efforts are in response to Trump’s equally unprecedented moves to interfere with voting this year, including attempts to impose proof-of-citizenship requirements and directing the Postal Service to decide which voters should get a mail ballot.
“We have never prepared for an election sabotage event like we have now,” said Ezra Levin of the left-leaning group Indivisible.
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The secret ballot, an article of faith in US elections, is being tested in Georgia
Security researchers say rapid advances in artificial intelligence can exploit a flaw in voting equipment in Georgia to allow voters’ choices to be exposed after their ballots have been cast.
Election security advocates are criticizing state election officials for failing to fix the system’s vulnerability before the November elections. Election officials say they’ve taken steps to address the potential harm, but some advocates say it’s not enough.
The vulnerability does not allow votes to be changed, but it could match voters to their choices, violating the fundamental right of ballot secrecy and potentially creating an opening for legal challenges.
Other jurisdictions across the country use the same voting system. But many have applied a software fix and some states don’t allow the release of records needed to exploit the flaw. Georgia is the only state where the machines are used by nearly all in-person voters.
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Trump says he’ll consider releasing 9/11 records after families’ request
Trump said Sunday that he will look into requests from families of Sept. 11 victims to release records that could shed light on Saudi Arabia’s alleged role in the attacks 25 years ago.
Several families have long alleged that a group of extremist religious leaders in Saudi Arabia gained influence in the Saudi government and aided the hijackers. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, but the Saudi government has long denied any involvement in the attacks.
The families have asked Trump to declassify and release the relevant records. Asked about it Sunday during his trip to Ireland, the president said he would consider it.
“I’m going to look at it when I get back,” Trump said just before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington after a weekend in Ireland. “I know they asked me Friday.”
The relatives of 9/11 victims have been engaged in a lengthy legal battle against the Saudis. One of them, Terry Strada, called on Trump during the remembrance in New York City on Friday to “tell the Saudis to stop lying.”
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Trump agrees to new bipartisan ethics provision in massive crypto bill, Republican senators say
Trump has agreed to a significant portion of a stringent ethics proposal that is part of broader cryptocurrency legislation headed for a key vote this week, according to three of the bill’s main Republican authors.
The bill initially had just a provision included that would bar all federally elected officials and their spouses, as well as federal judges, from issuing digital assets.
A core group of Democrats, as well as Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said that didn’t go far enough to address conflict-of-interest issues they had with Trump’s crypto wealth. Their votes would be needed to advance the bill in a key vote this Tuesday.
Tillis and Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., along with several other Democrats, had demanded language that would allow state attorneys general to step in and enforce the law in addition to the Justice Department.
In private, White House officials had raised concerns about giving state attorneys general the power to enforce the law. But a senior GOP aide said the president had agreed to “about 80%” of the proposal from Tillis and Gallego, pointing mainly to the state attorneys general provision.
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Trump says he’s lifting a 10% tariff on Irish whiskey because ‘everybody’s been bugging me’
Trump announced on Sunday at the close of a golf tournament in Ireland that he plans to remove a 10% tariff on Irish whiskey.
Trump said during the trophy ceremony for the Irish Open that he had been asked about the issue by everyone, including Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin and even some of the golfers. Irish Open winner Shane Lowry was among them, Trump said.
“Everybody’s been bugging me” to do it, the Republican president said. “And I said, ‘On behalf of the United States of America, I am going to take the tariffs off’” of Irish whiskey.
Irish whiskey currently faces the standard tariff imposed by Trump on most imports from the European Union, which was reduced from 15% to 10% in July.
Trump announced in April that he was lifting certain tariffs on U.K. whiskey, which includes Scotch and spirits made in Northern Ireland, creating an imbalance with Ireland.
Trump’s surprise announcement was met with loud whistling and cheers from the crowd of spectators. Details on how soon the tariff would be lifted were not immediately available.
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Trump downplays need to check AI development, says he doesn’t want to cede edge to China
Trump on Sunday played down the need for his administration to check the development of artificial intelligence, saying he worried about ceding America’s edge over China in a global competition and that winning would help address the risks from the advancing technology.
While acknowledging the need for some regulation, Trump provided no specifics about potential rules and attributed warnings about the technology moving too quickly and with little oversight to “negative forces” he did not identify, though industry pioneers have raised such concerns.
“We can put guardrails, we can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that ... shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen,” Trump told reporters during a weekend trip to Ireland. “But whoever wins with AI wins.”
The Republican president spoke a day after Dario Amodei, CEO of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, said the industry should put the brakes on its fast-moving development to give safety measures time to catch up. Other tech leaders, including Elon Musk and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, publicly agreed with Amodei.
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2nd federal judge freezes Trump mail ballot order with Supreme Court poised to rule
A federal judge ordered the U.S. Postal Service on Sunday to stop implementing President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting mail balloting, adding another obstacle to the administration’s effort to rewrite election rules as the Supreme Court is poised to weigh in.
The nation’s highest court already is considering the administration’s appeal of an order by U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani in Boston prohibiting the Postal Service from enforcing its new rule on mail voting before this year’s midterm elections.
Late Sunday, U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols in Washington, D.C., handed down a similar hold on the rule.
Nichols had refused to issue an injunction in May, ruling at the time that a lawsuit was brought too early. That was the high court’s reasoning late last month when it lifted an earlier freeze by Talwani. Then the administration issued its rule to move ahead with Trump’s plan and the plaintiffs in Boston and Washington, D.C., refiled their lawsuits.
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