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While Donald Trump claims his own “high IQ” is the only guardrail the AI industry needs, members of Congress on both sides of the political aisle are scrambling to rein in AI companies. The Kennedy Center’s board — which Trump chairs — just voted to shut the whole building down after a federal judge blocked its latest attempt to brand it with the president’s name. Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky is now forcing the House of Representatives to vote on impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. And FBI Director Kash Patel spent the better part of a Senate hearing begging the committee chairman to just end the proceedings rather than face more questions.
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Top AI industry executives at companies like Anthropic, OpenAI and Google DeepMind have all been warning that development of AI is moving so fast it could soon become uncontrollable. But in a recent Truth Social post, Donald Trump’s dismissed calls for additional regulation, saying the only guardrail the industry needs is a “high-IQ president,” meaning himself, naturally.
In a comment to Raw America Capitol correspondent Luke De Cresce, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York called Trump’s remark “reckless.” She went on to suggest that because Trump is the beneficiary of donations from the AI industry, “corruption” was the primary driver of his decisions, rather than concern for Americans.
“The AI industry is the number one donor to Donald Trump, and one thing that we’ve learned from this White House over the last year and a half is that they are a pay-for-play operation,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“I’m very worried for the working class in America right now,” the Bronx congresswoman added. She noted that millions of American workers and retirees could be left holding the bag if the AI bubble bursts due to them having “exposure” to the AI industry in their 401(k)s and pensions.
Even Republicans are raising the alarm. Senator John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana told Raw America he aims to introduce legislation as soon as Wednesday requiring artificial intelligence models to have a built-in “kill switch” in the event that all other safeguards fail.
“I’m not putting the government in charge of a kill switch, I’m just saying if you’re going to have an AI model, you’ve gotta have a kill switch,” Kennedy said.
Even members of the president’s own party believe that his own leadership isn’t a sufficient enough safeguard, and one of them is even introducing legislation to do what Trump won’t. Keep a close eye on this story.
Early on in Trump’s second presidency, he made the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts a centerpiece of his effort to remake Washington D.C. in his image and named himself chairman of the vaunted institution. Now, his handpicked board is immediately closing the venue, citing financial and structural problems. But aside from the fact that those financial troubles were caused by Trump himself, the timing is particularly noteworthy.
The board’s vote came on the heels of U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, blocking the board’s plan to put Trump’s name on the building once again. Cooper accused the government of playing “word games” in its filing by trying to dress up a memorial to Trump as something else entirely.
This is the third time since February that the board has voted to shut down the Kennedy Center. Democratic Congresswoman Joyce Beatty of Ohio, who has a seat on the board due to her position in Congress, has been the lone voice in the wilderness railing against both the attempted closures and the attempts to put Trump’s name on the building facade. She called the president’s unrelenting efforts to add his name to the facility “the definition of insanity.”
Trump maintained on his Truth Social account that the closure is simply about safety and that he raised $17 million to keep the center afloat during the extended closure. But Judge Cooper’s ruling notes that the reconstruction money is directly linked to whether Trump adds his name to the building, rather than any safety issue. Cooper wrote in his ruling that the Kennedy Center board simply can’t install memorials to Trump or anyone else at the facility without Congressional approval. Trump is almost certainly going to appeal this decision, though he’ll likely get the same result.
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Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky is now forcing the House of Representatives to vote on articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Massie filed the impeachment legislation as a privileged resolution, which means the House has to act on it within two days, even if leadership is against it.
Massie maintains that Hegseth violated his oath to the Constitution and his duty to see that the laws are faithfully executed, particularly as it relates to war powers. Part of Massie’s resolution mentions the military operation in Venezuela earlier this year that led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Massie accused Hegseth of carrying out the operation without seeking Congress’ approval, which the Constitution requires for all acts of war.
Massie lost his own Republican primary after Donald Trump endorsed his opponent, Ed Gallrein. Since his loss, Massie has made a habit of routinely breaking with both Trump and the GOP, including his push to release the Epstein files alongside Congressman Ro Khanna of California.
House Republicans will now have to go on record about Hegseth — and tangentially, the Iran war and the Venezuela raid — just a few weeks before the midterms, as the U.S. military continues operations in the Middle East with no end in sight and Hegseth’s Pentagon keeps burning through the United States’ arsenal at an alarming rate.
A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing got particularly tense today as FBI Director Kash Patel was peppered with tough questions from Democrats — particularly Senator Adam Schiff of California. Schiff seemed to have struck a nerve when asking Patel about reports that an FBI SWAT team was once used to escorted Patel’s girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, back in February.
Patel cut Schiff off during that line of questioning and insisted the story was a lie. When Schiff repeated his question, Patel insisted that he wouldn’t be answering it, saying that it was based on a lie. At one point during the exchange, Patel turned to committee chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa and asked him to just end the hearing altogether. Grassley refused to let him off the hook.
Schiff didn’t stop at the questions about the SWAT team. He brought up a report the Atlantic published the summer in which several of Patel’s FBI colleagues reportedly were alarmed by his heavy drinking and accused him of frequent absences. Patel, once again, called that report a lie and told senators he was suing the magazine for $1 billion over the report. He also denied using official FBI resources to investigate the reporter who wrote that story.
Other Democratic members of the committee also blasted Patel from the stand. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey called Patel a “lackey” who was “an embarrassment” to the bureau and who wouldn’t pass the basic training FBI applicants go through at Quantico. He even compared the FBI director to a “kid” rushing a fraternity “doing keg stands.”
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