Cat Zakrzewski

There is a battle set to play out across the country as super PACs backed by Trump-supporting tech moguls and the social network giant Meta try to use the 2026 midterms to reengineer Congress and state legislatures in favor of their ambitions for artificial intelligence. The groups aim to wrest control of the public narrative around AI, just as politicians in both parties have started warning that the industry is moving too fast. The largest of the pro-AI super PACs, Leadin

Elon Musk arrived at the White House prepared to take a chainsaw to the federal government, promising to slash $2 trillion in spending. A little more than 100 days later, the world’s richest man is retreating from Washington far short of that goal after an often painful education in the mechanics of the U.S.

President Donald Trump fired the only two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission, handing the remaining Republican commissioners exclusive control over the agency that oversees antitrust and consumer protection laws and serves as the U.S. government’s primary regulator of the tech industry. FTC  Commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter announced their dismissals on the social media site X, with both calling their firings illegal.

The California State Assembly passed a bill on August 28 that would enact the nation’s strictest regulations on artificial intelligence companies, pushing the fierce fight over how to regulate AI toward Gov.

Donald Trump’s allies are drafting a sweeping AI executive order that would launch a series of “Manhattan Projects” to develop military technology and immediately review “unnecessary and burdensome regulations”—signaling how a potential second Trump administration may pursue AI policies favorable to Silicon Valley investors and companies. The framework would also create “industry-led” agencies to evaluate AI models and secure systems from foreign adversaries. The framework—which includes a section titled “Make America First in AI”—presents a markedly different strategy for the booming secto

Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Robert Garcia (D-CA) opened an investigation of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, examining whether the company implemented adequate safeguards to prevent Russia from deploying its Starlink satellite internet service in its war against Ukraine. The lawmakers sent a letter demanding that the company report complaints about potential illegal acquisitions of Starlink terminals, including in Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine.

After a divisive investigation into the “Twitter Files” that Republicans decried as “harassment,” the Federal Trade Commission has found no evidence that the social network violated the terms of a government order that placed sweeping restrictions on the company’s data security practices. “Longtime information security employees at Twitter intervened and implemented safeguards to mitigate the risks,” the FTC said.

A California lawmaker introduced a bill aiming to force companies to test the most powerful artificial intelligence models before releasing them—a landmark proposal that could inspire regulation around the country as state legislatures increasingly take up the swiftly evolving technology. The new bill, sponsored by Sen Scott Wiener (D-CA), who represents San Francisco, would require companies training new AI models to test their tools for “unsafe” behavior, institute hacking protections and develop the tech in such a way that it can be shut down completely.

The US federal government has stopped warning some social networks about foreign disinformation campaigns on their platforms, reversing a years-long approach to preventing Russia and other actors from interfering in American politics less than a year before the US presidential elections. Meta no longer receives notifications of global influence campaigns from the Biden administration, halting a prolonged partnership between the federal government and the world’s largest social media company.