Here’s what happened under the Trump administration this week that you may have missed.
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Trump met with China’s president and resisted calls for a deal on AI
President Donald Trump met this week with the leader of the world’s other artificial intelligence superpower, China. Trump and Xi Jinping talked about cooperation amid competition. But Trump expressed no interest in reaching an international deal to slow down AI development that leading AI makers are urging him to reach.
“I’m not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution,” Trump told the United Nations this week, announcing he’s renaming AI as “super intelligence.”
Most Americans want restrictions on AI; so does a bipartisan coalition in Congress. Xi has talked about AI’s dangers. As he resists those calls, Trump has a personal financial stake in AI’s boom, The Washington Post reported this week.
Trump and his sons have a huge web of investments and technology companies that are a growing part of his portfolio, The Post reports. Trump has not put his assets in a blind trust, and he is a particularly active trader, sometimes pushing the limits of the law requiring him to report millions in trades. The White House said the president’s stock trades are “made entirely by independent managers.” But AI is driving much of the investment in the U.S.
The White House is trying to stop many medical research grants
The federal government plays a major role in finding the next breakthroughs for rare diseases: It funds billions of dollars of research every year through the National Institutes of Health.
The Trump administration has been trying to play an active role in what scientific research gets funded to make sure it aligns with the president’s political views. The administration cut hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding for health issues impacting minority, gay and transgender people. It’s issued fewer grants related to women’s health. And now the White House is trying to set up its own commission to review all grants before they go to scientists, The Washington Post reported this week.
But Congress approves NIH spending, and some Republicans have pushed back on the administration for picking and choosing where the money goes.
Any attempt “to politicize grant-making at the National Institutes of Health” goes against the intent of Congress, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said in a statement this week.
“I’m a Republican senator,” wrote Sen. Dave McCormick (Pennsylvania), in The Post this week. “America needs more science, not less.” He said the funding is a small return on investment for medical breakthroughs like gene-editing therapy for rare diseases.
“Conservatives should recognize that basic research, like national security,” McCormick wrote, “is a public good that private capital rarely funds.”
Republican senators are starting to break from Trump in other noticeable ways
Scientific research is not the only area Republican lawmakers are pushing back against Trump. This week, the powerful chair of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee went to the Senate floor to criticize Trump’s meeting with China’s president, saying China clearly supports Iran and is building up its military. “Quite frankly, had the White House asked me for advice, I would’ve suggested the president not invite Xi Jinping to Washington for such a lavish welcome,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi).
Another group of senators, including Republicans, urged Trump to disinvite Russian President Vladimir Putin from the Group of 20 summit the U.S. is hosting later this year.
Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) is calling on the Senate to investigate Donald Trump Jr.(among other family members of presidents), specifically for how an oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin funded part of Trump Jr.’s lavish wedding in May. “A toaster is a wedding gift,” Curtis wrote on social media. “A private-island party paid for by a Putin-connected oligarch is something else.”
In Congress, a small but noticeable amount of Republicans are voting against the Iran war. This week the Senate narrowly rejected a limit on Trump’s war powers in Iran. Four Republicans defied Trump and voted for it. A similar resolution passed the House last week with a growing number of Republicans voting for it.
Republicans running in key Senate races — like Michigan, Iowa and Ohio — called for the Iran war to endthis week, despite their earlier support for it. And Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Florida) warned Trump in a campaign ad that Hispanic voters “feel betrayed” by his immigration enforcement efforts.
Amber Phillips writes The 5-Minute Fix newsletter, a quick analysis of the day’s biggest political news. Send her an email here, or ask a question that could be featured in an upcoming newsletter.
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