As you’ve likely seen, a strange and perhaps positive chain of events unfolded over the weekend in the world of AI and what we might call human extinction discourse. Dario Amodei, CEO and cofounder of Anthropic, posted an essay calling for a global slow-down in AI development to allow more time to prioritize safety and what the industry calls “alignment” and pledging that Anthropic would take a series of steps in that direction unilaterally. Somewhat surprisingly, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and archvillain Elon Musk stepped forward and said they agreed and appeared to agree to join Anthropic in the proposed slowdown.
Regardless of what one thinks of AI and its possible dangers — existential or otherwise — it’s hard not to see this as at least a somewhat good development. And I say that with full cognizance of the various arguments about financial overextension or heading off sterner regulation that may make these moves self-interested. (AI critic Gary Marcus gives it a qualified endorsement along with a good cross-section of responses.) But I wanted to step back for a moment and talk more generally about the question of “externalities” which has always been the problem lurking in the background of Big Tech’s road to national and global domination.
If you read one thing today, make sure it’s Christopher Mathias’ exclusive for TPM on Marshall Rawson, the Republican nominee for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives who marched alongside neo-Nazis at the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, according to video and a photo we unearthed.
Rawson isn’t publicly touting his presence at the “Unite the Right” rally, but he’s not exactly distancing himself either, telling TPM: “Over the entire span of my adult life, I’ve been very active defending historical monuments from destruction or removal, and I feel that way about almost all monuments, not just those associated with southern history.”
Rawson’s successful GOP primary campaign against the son of the term-limited incumbent received significant financial support from a number of figures in the white supremacy movement. I’m not sure that’s enough on its own to make Rawson some kind of Manchurian candidate of right-wing extremism, nor does it mean they represent him, but it does suggest they think he represents them.
This is the fruit of the permission structure President Trump created for right-wing extremism. After Charlottesville, President Trump rolled out the “very fine people, on both sides” false equivalency. It was a precursor to his “Stand back and stand by” in 2020, which became a catalyst for the Jan. 6 attack.
Trump has been feeding this fire almost uninterrupted for a decade now. We see it in congressional staffers turned Groypers, in campaign staffers toying with Nazi imagery, and in the sheer delight in transgressive behavior as a tribal marker.
Each of these incidents not only sows seeds for future division, hatred, and extremism, but does so without shame or opprobrium. It is open and brazen and unapologetic. Each incident gives birth to new legions of supporters who are steeped in the common experiences of their movement.
Detect a Pattern?
Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) fired his re-election campaign’s political director after the WaPo revealed he had once used a photo of Nazi SS soldiers as his Facebook photo
Today in Overt Racism
Bo French is the GOP nominee for statewide office in Texas:
Election Interference Watch
The WaPo has good roundup of why the biggest threat to the midterm elections is the Trump administration itself.
Late Sunday, a second federal judge more fully blocked the Trump administration from proceeding with the new USPS rule on mail-in ballots. The order came from U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee in D.C.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) is siding with the Trump administration against Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, also a Republican, who is fending off federal demands for private voter data under threat of criminal prosecution.
Great Read: War on Women Edition
A great NYT piece on the extraordinary lengths Republican men in Utah have gone to restructure government to curtail the power of Republican women, especially judges.
Hmmm …
Joe diGenova abruptly resigned from the Trump DOJ the day after he signed a grand jury subpoena for the testimony of former CIA Director John Brennan in the sweeping “grand conspiracy” investigation, according to a new filing this morning by Brennan’s attorney in his preemptive lawsuit against the Trump administration.
If the account offered by Brennan attorney Kenneth L. Wainstein is accurate — and he’s no slouch — then the DOJ confirmed to him what’s been generally reported already: that that there are two investigations involving Brennan, the “grand conspiracy” case in south Florida and a lying to Congress case in DC:
I just can’t let it go that the Trump DOJ engaged in a new bit of brazen gamesmanship to do the president yet another solid in his lawsuit against the IRS — even though it’s a bit in the weeds.
After failing to even enter an appearance in defense of Trump’s lawsuit, let alone defending against it, and then reaching a collusive settlement that gave Trump IRS immunity and created the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund … after ALL OF THAT … the Trump DOJ notified U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams on Friday that it is now appealing her order that found the settlement to be “non-adversarial, collusive, and jurisdictionally improper” and imposed sanctions on Trump’s lawyers.
While the notice of appeal filed by newly installed acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter was still timely, it comes more than a month after Trump and his lawyers appealed Judge Williams’ order. It’s all part of maintaining the charade that DOJ is not on the same side of the case as the president.
Unlawful Deportations Start to Add Up
Nearly 30 people have been unlawfully deported since Trump returned to office, either in violation of court orders, legally mandated due process protections, or immigration court orders, an analysis by Politico shows.
Criminalizing Dissent Watch
Prosecutions of protesters flop: The Trump DOJ has failed to secure felony convictions against most of the 102 protesters arrested in Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Oregon, and Washington, D.C. last year on charges of assaulting federal immigration agents, the AP reports.
Joint Task Force Vanguard: Under orders from President Trump to target left-leaning ideology, the Trump DOJ is going after randos online.
Thread of the Day:
A small note at the end of a DHS case report in Minneapolis said that an investigation into protestors had been "accepted under CUC Op Keyhole"What did this mean?
I find it so painful to watch Canada, abandoned by the United States, seek deeper ties with the EU, including a possible “associate member” status envision by Prime Minister Mark Carney.
The Most Important News Today
The Trump administration is expected to announce today that the federal government will no longer regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants — dooming for the foreseeable future efforts to rein in carbon pollution even as the metastasizing effects of global warming are becoming abundantly clear.
The power sector is the second largest source of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the United States. … if the U.S. power sector were its own country, it would be the fifth-largest climate polluter in the world after China, the entire United States, India and Russia.
To remove greenhouse gas emissions from the protections of the Clean Air Act, the Trump administration has to conclude that they do not endanger human health or the environment.
News? Tips? Feedback? Please let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, the Trump White House’s memo directing federal law enforcement to consider progressive beliefs as indicators of domestic terrorism, has done a lot of things. It’s brought a broad conspiracy case against nonviolent protestors in Minneapolis, netted half-century sentences on terrorism charges for a Texas anti-ICE protest that turned violent, and sparked what one former counterterrorism prosecutor described to TPM as a COINTELPRO-like law enforcement war on opposition protestors.
It’s also causing trouble for those extremely aggressive and extremely online people who might be inclined to make extremely inadvisable social media posts.
The Republican nominee for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives marched alongside neo-Nazis at the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a new Talking Points Memo investigation can reveal.
Even as tech CEOs cast AI as a kind of runaway train, Trump is urging full speed ahead. “We’re leading China in AI, we’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins,” he said over the weekend.
It’s an increasingly rare position, even within the Republican Party. Chair of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology David Sacks, however, also remains bullish — and went so far as to claim on Fox last week that criticism of AI was an “op.”
“The truth is, this was a well-orchestrated media op,” he said of warnings by Jacob Coxon, the Anthropic safety researcher who quit last week. “And it was designed to scare the public about AI — so they implement their preferred approach to AI, which is a government takeover, to have a very heavy hand in government regulation of AI.”
Trump seemingly echoed that over the weekend. “I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up,” he said.
The base isn’t necessarily in the same place. Steve Bannon is set to speak at an event this week to call for greater controls on the technology, alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — the loudest elected, Democratic-aligned AI-skeptical voice — and Coxon. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), too, sounded the mildest note of caution over the weekend, while effectively shrugging off his own role, urging the companies to self-regulate.
Democrats, meanwhile, are noting voters’ concern about this topic, though they, too, are not yet speaking in one voice. Barack Obama, at a fundraiser, urged congressional Democrats to present a clear message on the dangers of the technology.
“If I were running for president next year, this would be one of my central agendas, and I would have a very clear plan, and I would talk about this, and I would say, ‘Here’s our plan for safety, here’s our plan for making sure our kids are not corrupted by this,’” he said, per NBC News. “‘I would be thinking about the economic impacts in very concrete ways and understanding what does it mean if there’s going to be job displacement.’”
AI is often compared to nuclear proliferation, but in Congress’ reluctance to grapple with it, I find comparisons to climate change — a more recent abject failure by the U.S. government — more useful. Oil and coal companies were able to defuse political action in the U.S. with similar talking points — if the U.S. didn’t burn fossil fuels, other countries would, they claimed. Climate change was a fringe issue pushed by activist groups, not a topic for serious-minded politicians, they said.
By the time the U.S. government did take action, it faced structural impediments, with support for regulation of greenhouse gas emissions only rarely having majority support in Congress. Obama’s Clean Power Plan — implemented through executive action — was struck down by the courts. The Democratic-supported climate provisions in the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act — arduously passed through the budget reconciliation process to avoid the filibuster — were immediately scrapped by a new, Republican Congress once Trump retook control of the White House. Nearly 40 years after Congress was first warned about climate change, it has done virtually nothing on the topic.
Now, too, there’s a new dynamic in the mix — a Republican-controlled legislative branch that views itself, from issues of war to spending, as subordinate to the executive branch, and, specifically, to Trump. That, coupled with Trump’s dismissiveness toward those who urge caution around the new technology, does not bode well for the U.S. government leading the way on reining in AI.
Bo French’s Latest Anti-Immigrant Post Gets Some Mild GOP Pushback
MANSFIELD, TEXAS – APRIL 15: Tarrant County Republican Party Chair Bo French speaks during a rally, on Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in Mansfield. (Shafkat Anowar/The Dallas Morning News via Getty Images)
During a reporting trip to Texas earlier this year, TPM’s Josh Kovensky took note of the tremendously toxic force that is Bo French, now the Republican nominee for the state’s railroad commission, which, in Texas, is an important office, regulating the state’s oil and gas industry and pipelines.
To give just a taste of who this guy is, last year he posted a poll asking his X audience, “Who is a bigger threat to America?” The options were “Jews” and “Muslims.”
On Sunday, he posted a picture that appears to show young people of South Asian descent celebrating in a stadium. “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this,” he wrote. “I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”
Texas Republicans, as Josh Kovensky saw during his trip, have leaned hard into demonizing both Muslim Texans and South Asian Texans, apparently calculating that doing so will help get xenophobes amped to vote in the midterms.
French’s post prompted some pushback from elected Republicans in Texas, though Governor Greg Abbott qualified his criticism of French by stating that Texas should have the “toughest immigration laws of any state in America” and to call for “freezing H1B visas at our universities.”
Attorney General Ken Paxton, asked by Politico for comment on French’s post, did not mention French but attacked James Talarico, his opponent in the Senate race, per Politico.
Tabs
The political director for Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) left his reelection campaign after the Washington Post reported that he had posted pictures of Nazi soldiers to his Facebook and participated in the creation of a public playlist that celebrated Rhodesia, a white-governed breakaway state in Africa admired by white supremacists.
Trump does not yet appear to be spending money to defend Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, the Washington Sun reports.
Man of the Hour
DOONBEG, IRELAND – SEPTEMBER 13: Donald Trump Jr. talks with his wife Bettina Anderson on day four of the Amgen Irish Open at Trump International Golf Links in Doonbeg on September 13, 2026 in Doonbeg, Ireland. (Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
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