Trump’s New Press Secretary Busted Peddling Bonkers Nazi Claim

Sarah Ewall-Wice
Fri, October 9, 2026 

THE DAILY BEAST

Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty Images

President Donald Trump's new press secretary has a history of spreading misinformation, from election denialism to an extreme claim linking the abortion pill mifepristone to Nazi concentration camps.

Katie Zacharia was named White House press secretary on Friday, filling the role vacated by Karoline Leavitt, who left the role at the end of August.

When not busy with her frequent appearances on conservative television, including Fox News and Newsmax, the 41-year-old blonde MAGA commentator has been a rabid poster on social media, where she defends Trump and blasts his enemies.

But she has also promoted an outlandish argument attempting to tie the abortion pill directly to Nazi Germany and concentration camps, as captured in a recently resurfaced clip:

In November 2025, Zacharia posted on X about the claim, similar to ones used by right-wing anti-abortion activists.

She wrote, "Mifepristone, formerly called RU-486, is connected to the manufacturer of the deadly gas Zyklon B, used in the World War II concentration camps."

The new press secretary posted a conspiracy theory trying to tie the abortion pill to Nazi Germany in November 2025. / X

She continued, "Zyklon-B was originally used as a pesticide and marketed by the German Corporation for Pest Control, now known as Detia Degesch GmbH. Degesch, in which German chemical company I.G. Farben had a 42.5% interest and on whose board of 11 it had five seats, was the sole producer of the gas."

Conservative media commentator Katie Zacharia, pictured Dec. 14, 2025, is the new White House Press Secretary. / Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for 2521 Entertainment and Angel Studios

"According to the New York Times, 'I.G. Farben played so important a role in Hitler's war machine and in the Holocaust that it came to be called "the devil's chemist." It manufactured Zyklon B, the gas-chamber poison, among many other products, and its factories exploited more than 35,000 slave labourers, many from Auschwitz. It even built a concentration camp of its own to improve efficiency,'" Zacharia posted.

It's not exactly clear where she came up with her conspiracy theory tying RU-486 to Zyklon B and concentration camps.

RU-486, which is known generically as mifepristone, is a synthetic steroid medication invented in the 1980s by a French pharmaceutical company, Roussel-Uclaf.

The abortion pill, mifepristone, was invented by a French company in the 1980s. / Callaghan O'Hare / Callaghan O'Hare/File Photo/Reuters

The name comes from an abbreviation for the company plus a serial number, as noted by Britannica.

It was approved for use in 1988. Meanwhile, the gas Zyklon B used in death camps was provided by Degesch, a subsidiary of I.G. Farben, which later evolved into the German chemical company Hoechst, according to Britannica.

While Roussel-Uclaf was acquired by Hoechst AG, that did not happen until 1997, nearly a decade after RU-486 was approved for use. Mifepristone was approved for use in the U.S. by the FDA in 2000.

Katie Zacharia has been named as the next White House press secretary. / The Daily Beast/Katie Zacharia/Instagram

Not only is its creation attributed to the French company, but French biochemist Étienne-Émile Baulieu is credited specifically as the "father" of the abortion pill for his work on RU-486. He was born in France and was a member of the French Resistance during the war before attending school to become a physician.

Zacharia has also promoted Trump's baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, even invoking the death of a National Guard soldier to attack former President Joe Biden.

In a December 2025 post on X, Zacharia responded to a White House tribute to Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, who was fatally shot while serving in Washington, D.C.

"The price of a stolen 2020 election and subsequent autopen presidency is American Blood," she wrote, adding, "RIP 🕊️."

Katie Zacharia pushed Trump's baseless stolen election theory. / Katie Zacharia/X

But Beckstrom had been deployed to the nation's capital in August 2025 as part of Trump's own National Guard operation, months after Biden left office. She was shot on Nov. 26 and died the following day. There is no evidence that the 2020 election was stolen, and Zacharia offered no evidence connecting Biden's presidency to Beckstrom's killing.

Zacharia, who was named White House press secretary on Friday, previously served in the Trump administration as spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security from February to March 2026.


Trump’s New Press Secretary Runs to Fox News for Awkward Debut

Evgenia Anastasakos
Sat, October 10, 2026 

DAILY BEAST


Fox News

Press Secretary Katie Zacharia has run to one of the president's favorite shows in her first appearance since being named press secretary.

Zacharia, 41, awkwardly fawned over her new boss in a softball interview on Fox & Friends that was focused on her new gig.

"I am looking forward to walking in and working for President Trump," she told the panel. "This job is not about me; this job is about him and how he wants to communicate to the American people. His policies are the most effective, the most exciting. He is the most energetic and intense president we have ever seen."

The mother of four is replacing Karoline Leavitt, who left the White House in August. She officially starts on Monday, but is already playing the role of MAGA's top mouthpiece.

"When I was there yesterday, he went and showed me where the ballroom will be," she said of her White House visit. "The building is so fast—he is ahead of schedule, under budget, and it's going to be amazing, and just to see this vision he has for building, but also for America and the greatness that America has and has always had, and that he's bringing back, I can't wait to work for President Trump on Monday."

When asked whether she'll hold a press briefing on her first day, she said she will if Trump asks her to.

Zacharia previously served as a senior communications advisor at Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social. She was also a frequent guest commentator on Fox News and Newsmax and a lawyer for Fix California, a nonprofit founded by Trump ally Ric Grenell.

She also briefly worked under Kristi Noem as a deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security.

On Fox, Zacharia defended Trump's diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which has been slammed as a betrayal of Ukraine and our European allies. Zacharia says the deal is "not actually deleterious toward bringing peace."

"In fact, it works toward peace," Zacharia said. She did not elaborate on how the agreement will help end the Russia-Ukraine war.

Brazil on the Brink: Why Lula Is Down Against Bolsonaro Jr.

There are still three weeks until the next round, and Lula could still win, but it’s gonna take a massive fight. Part of that fight is changing how the international media covers things.


Brazil’s former President (2003-2010) and then-presidential candidate for the leftist Workers Party (PT) Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva waves a national flag during a campaign rally in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais state, Brazil on October 9, 2022.
(Photo by Douglas Magno / AFP via Getty Image)

Mike Elk
Oct 05, 2026

Payday Report

With the Brazilian presidential election headed to a runoff, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is down 47% to 45% and faces a massive fight ahead. I wanted to give a quick analysis of what happened and where things are going next.

Lula Could Still Win if He Can Consolidate Support from Third Parties

Lula lost by only 2%, and several third-party candidates, who took a combined 8% of the vote, have publicly indicated they would not endorse Flávio Bolsonaro in the second round.

Likewise, 29 million Brazilians did not vote in this round of the runoff and may be persuaded to vote for Lula in the second round if they fear Bolsonaro.

While Brasil defeated Jair Bolsonaro narrowly in 2022, it swung right again, much like the United States. Voters are upset, and they are taking it out on the party in power.

On Tuesday, the Brazilian Senate is scheduled to vote on a measure that would shorten the Brazilian workweek from six days to five days. Bolsonaro has opposed this measure, and Lula could use the vote to mobilize workers’ support against the Bolsonaro team.

It’s a tough road ahead for Lula, but not impossible.

What Hurt Lula in the First Round?

Three primary factors hurt Lula in the first round. First, Lula’s age and the fact that the Workers’ Party (PT) has held the presidency in Brazil for 18 of the last 24 years.

The second is that the Brazilian corporate media constantly manufactured scandals against Lula.

Finally, the role that US President Donald Trump played in training and validating the right-wing in Brasil, while not decisive, provided critical support. Here’s what went wrong for Lula.
1. Lula is 80 & His Party Ruled Brasil for 18 of the Last 24 Years

Like former US President Joe Biden, one problem Lula faces right now is that he is 80 years old. He doesn’t look as sharp as he used to, while Flávio Bolsonaro is nearly half his age—45 years younger.

Additionally, Lula’s party, the Workers’ Party (PT), has held the presidency for 18 of the last 24 years. Lula and Dilma, both members of the Workers’ Party (PT), held the presidency from 2002 to 2016. Lula was reelected in 2022 for his record third term. No Brazilian has ever won a third term.

Although the PT has rarely controlled Congress, it is seen as the ruling party because it has held the presidency for 18 of the last 24 years. Voters are likely to associate any problems in the country with the PT, which has held the presidency for so long.

While Brasil defeated Jair Bolsonaro narrowly in 2022, it swung right again, much like the United States. Voters are upset, and they are taking it out on the party in power.

Even worse, Lula failed to recruit young candidates, who may have excited voters to turn out in tight races. In what should have been a competitive Senate election in Rio de Janeiro, the PT recruited 84-year-old Bendedita da Silva, who lost in a landslide to Bolsonaro allies.

Last week, Lula skipped the presidential debate; so did Bolsonaro and its unclear how much this decision might have hurt him.

Lacking excitement, nearly 29 million Brazilians did not vote despite it being obligatory in Brasil.
2. Brazilian Media Manufacturing Scandals Against Lula

The Brazilian media market is extremely consolidated, and the heads of major networks like Globo have been going after Lula hard. They have been accused of manufacturing scandals against Lula.

Last November, the financial institution Banco Master collapsed amid allegations of massive fraud. The bank was being run like a Ponzi scheme, resulting in the largest financial collapse in Brazilian history, with nearly $8 billion in investors’ funds lost.

Despite Banco Master CEO Daniel Vorcaro being a very vocal Bolsonaro supporter, the Brazilian media has repeatedly tried to link the scandal to Lula’s Workers’ Party, as Vorcaro cultivated political ties on both sides of the aisle.

Every attack on Lula by the Trump administration generated headlines in Brasil and validated the wild claims made by Bolsonaro allies of a flawed Brazilian justice system.

Lula’s son, businessman Fábio Luís da Silva, commonly known as “Lulinha,” was scrutinized over large bank accounts worth millions of dollars. For months, Lulinha has offered to open his books and has claimed that he received no special favors from Banco Master. Still, the media repeatedly raised questions about Lulinha’s alleged impropriety.

At one point, media giant TV Globo made a giant infographic web with arrows, showing a complex network linked to Lula. Other reporters widely ridiculed the conspiracy theory map, and TV Globo eventually had to apologize publicly on air.

Then, in May, The Intercept Brasil released a WhatsApp message from Flávio Bolsonaro to Vorcaro, asking him for more than $26 million to fund a strange English-language biopic named Dark Horse, about his father. In the film, Jair Bolsonaro is portrayed by right-wing American actor Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in the controversial 2004 film The Passion of the Christ.

Polling throughout the spring and summer showed Lula leading as the scandal remained fresh in people’s minds. Then, the Brazilian corporate media went into high gear to attack Lula. They went after Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who led the prosecution that jailed Bolsonaro.

Moraes has accused Brazilian Supreme Court Justice André Mendonca, a Bolsonaro appointee, of failing to follow proper procedure in his handling of the Banco Master scandal, leaking information to the press on Lula’s political allies while hiding information on Bolsonaro’s allies.

Moraes asked the Brazilian Federal police to investigate Mendonça’s violation of federal investigation procedures and for selectively leaking information to the press that would make Lula allies look bad while suppressing information on Bolsonaro allies.

Moraes accused Mendonça of attempting to “steer the production of evidence toward falsely accusing Supreme Court justices of crimes, expressly naming Justices Gilmar Mendes, Dias Toffoli, Luiz Fux, Alexandre de Moraes, and Nunes Marques, as well as the prosecutor general and the director-general of the Federal Police.”
3. Trump Trained and Emboldened Bolsonaro Allies

While I don’t want to underestimate the strength of fascists within Brasil, it’s important to note that Trump and his operatives did help the Bolsonaro family pull off an impressive comeback.

In March 2025, Eduardo Bolsonaro fled to the United States rather than face prosecution in Brasil for his role in trying to orchestrate a coup, and he was granted permanent residency status in July. While in the United States, Eduardo Bolsonaro has worked closely with Trump officials, including Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions Richard Grenell, to oust Lula from power.

“It was a privilege to speak with Ambassador Richard Grenell at President Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago,” Eduardo Bolsonaro wrote on Instagram following a meeting with Grenel in 2025. “The conservative movement is global—and we are just getting started.”

Eduardo Bolsonaro worked closely with top Trump aides like Brad Parscale, Trump’s director of digital strategy, to learn the social media strategy that led Trump to win reelection.

As president, Trump worked hard to attack Lula. He placed punitive tariffs on Brazil for convicting Jair Bolsonaro, Eduardo’s father, for attempting to assassinate Lula and overthrow his government in 2022. These tariffs hurt Brasil’s economy.

More importantly, Trump’s constant denunciation of the jailing of Bolsonaro validated conspiracy theories of right-wingers that the justice process was flawed. When Alexandre de Moraes, who led Bolsonaro’s conviction, was implicated in the Banco Master scandal, it only reinforced these conspiracy theories.

Ahead of the Brazilian presidential election, the Trump administration has labeled Brasil as a major distributor of cocaine and attempted to paint Lula as weak on taking on drug gangs.

In June, the Trump administration labeled two gangs as “terrorist organizations,” something which the Lula administration has repeatedly resisted because of fears of how the Trump administration could intervene in law enforcement and military matters in Brasil.

Still, every attack on Lula by the Trump administration generated headlines in Brasil and validated the wild claims made by Bolsonaro allies of a flawed Brazilian justice system.

On Friday, the Trump administration closed its embassy in Brasil and all of its consulates in a move that many saw as a scare tactic designed to interfere once again in the Brazilian presidential election.

The same day, the Brazilian federal police and intelligence service ABIN were warning of a possible US coup attempt. It was already known that Trump operatives were training operatives in Brasil, and the Brazilian federal police report described in depth how much Trump’s intervention had shifted things in Brasil.
International Media Failed to Check Brazilian Media

Finally, the international media completely ignored the Brazilian presidential election, allowing corporate media within Brazil to dominate the conversation without any accountability from the international media.

There are still three weeks until the next round, and Lula could still win, but it’s gonna take a massive fight. Part of that fight is changing how the international media covers things.

Payday Report can help play a small role in getting the US press more involved. The Washington Post once cited Payday Report in a front-page story for changing the way the pandemic strike wave was discussed, and maybe we can play a small role in getting American reporters to pay attention.

Donate to help Payday Report cover the fight ahead.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License


Mike Elk
Mike Elk is the senior labor reporter at Payday Report and member of the Washington-Baltimore NewsGuild. He previously served as senior labor reporter at POLITICO and at In These Times Magazine.
Full Bio >

Lula Heads to Presidential Runoff Against Bolsonaro’s Son as Trump Accused of Election Meddling

Ahead of Sunday’s contest, Brazil’s government and Lula’s presidential campaign called for investigations into alleged Trump administration efforts to interfere in the Latin American country’s politics.


Supporters of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva react after the first results of the presidential election in São Paulo, Brazil on October 4, 2026.
(Photo by Luis Robayo/AFP via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Oct 05, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Brazil’s presidential election headed to a runoff on Sunday after neither incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva nor challenger Flávio Bolsonaro—the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro and ally of US President Donald Trump—received enough votes to win outright.

The younger Bolsonaro, whose father is serving a 27-year prison sentence under house arrest for orchestrating a coup attempt in 2022, led Lula by two percentage points in the first round, with the final tally standing at 47% to 45%. The runoff will take place on October 25.

Sunday’s results—which included major conservative wins in down-ballot contests—heightened fears of another far-right victory in Latin America, where candidates backed by Trump have swept to power in recent elections, including in Colombia, Peru, and Chile. Ahead of Sunday’s contest, Lula’s campaign, Brazil’s intelligence agency, and outside observers accused the Trump administration of meddling in the high-stakes election in an effort to oust Lula and return an ally to the nation’s presidency.

Just days before the election, Lula’s team called for an investigation after the Trump administration halted US consular services in Brazil, citing “security concerns.”

Additionally, Lula’s government is calling for a probe of “alleged efforts by the United States to interfere in the country’s domestic politics through the diversion of funds to far-right causes,” Al Jazeera reported last week.

“Attorney General Jorge Messias called for the probe on Thursday, one day after the British newspaper The Guardian published a story suggesting that the administration of United States President Donald Trump planned to award $1 million to right-wing civil groups opposing the Brazilian Supreme Court,” the outlet noted. “Messias stated in a social media post that foreign meddling ‘cannot be tolerated’ and that the report represented ‘an important alert for Brazilian sovereignty.’”

Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the US-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, called the Trump administration’s interference “another US regime change operation,” pointing to the aggressive tariffs Trump imposed on Brazilian goods last year and the US State Department’s attempt to send two top officials to “cast doubt on the fairness and integrity of the country’s electoral system,” as The Washington Post reported earlier this year.

Trump, who hosted Flávio Bolsonaro at the White House in May, said last week that he was following the Brazilian election “very closely” and described the contest as “very important.” A key Trump ally in the region, Argentine President Javier Milei—whose austerity agenda has fueled an increase in poverty in his country—traveled to Brazil in July to support Bolsonaro’s campaign against Lula.

Flávio Bolsonaro, a sitting senator, wasn’t the only member of the Bolsonaro family seeking greater political power in Sunday’s elections. Jair Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle, and his second son, Carlos, both won seats in Brazil’s Senate.

The Guardian reported that “of the 54 senators elected, 34 were from the right or far-right.”

Following the results, Lula told supporters in Sāo Paulo on Sunday that “we have just had a lesson in Brazilian democracy.”

“The result is often unexpected. We can never get everything we wanted. I confess to you that I was convinced I was going to win the election in the first round,” said Lula. “But we have a second round.”

“From tomorrow we will launch a new campaign,” Lula added, “a campaign with only two candidates [where] we will be able to show the difference between our proposals for Brazil.”

Lula Campaign Asks to Probe Sudden US Shutdown of Consular Services as ‘Interference in Brazilian Elections’

“Often at the request of the Bolsonaro family, the US has engaged in a pressure campaign to weaken the Lula government,” explained one analyst.


Brazil’s President and presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (C) addresses supporters during a campaign rally on the eve of the general election, in Sao Paulo, Brazil on October 3, 2026.
(Photo by Luis Robayo/AFP via Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Oct 03, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Just two days before Brazil’s closely watched presidential election, the campaign of its left-wing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has asked the nation’s top election court to examine the sudden shutdown of US consular services as part of a broader investigation into alleged election “interference” by the Trump administration.

On Friday night, the US suspended in-person consular services at its embassy and consulates across Brazil on Friday and advised Americans to avoid US diplomatic facilities, citing unspecified “security concerns.”

In a petition filed to Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, Lula’s campaign said taking such an action just days before Brazilians vote “projects instability over the electoral environment,” something it said was part of a larger “infrastructure of external intervention in the Brazilian electoral process.”

In recent days, Brazil’s intelligence agency said it confirmed the existence of interference by the US in Brazil’s election to support Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro—who is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence under house arrest for orchestrating a coup attempt in 2022.

“Although Trump has not formally endorsed him, Bolsonaro is undoubtedly Washington’s preferred candidate,” explained Nick Cleveland-Stout, a research associate at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, on Friday. “Often at the request of the Bolsonaro family, the US has engaged in a pressure campaign to weaken the Lula government, sparking fears of further interference.”



Trump responded with hostility to the prosecution of the disgraced ex-president—imposing tariffs of up to 50% on Brazilian imports in retaliation, sanctioning the Supreme Court justice overseeing the case, and threatening to use American “military might” against Brazil.

He’s also designated two Brazilian crime groups as “narcoterrorist” organizations, invoking a similar pretext Trump used to justify his invasion of Venezuela to kidnap its leader Nicolás Maduro in January.

As the election has approached, Trump has appeared to put his thumb on the scale in an effort to stop Lula from achieving what would be an unprecedented fourth term.

In July, the US consulate in São Paulo invited right-wing pro-Bolsonaro social media influencers to a closed-door roundtable meeting to discuss “freedom of expression and the digital environment.”

The Guardian reported on Thursday that the State Department was also diverting $1 million from its human rights fund to oppose “judicial overreach and censorship” by Brazil’s Supreme Court, an apparent reference to the court’s actions against Bolsonaro and his allies.

The Brazilian government has denied visas to two State Department officials whom it said were seeking to discuss “election integrity,” which it perceived as an effort to “undermine the electoral system.”

Trump and his allies have previously spread baseless conspiracy theories to cast doubt upon Lula’s victory in 2022, which helped to fuel the failed coup. They’ve done the same with the victories of other left-wing candidates in Latin American elections—including Bolivia’s Evo Morales in 2019 and Guatemala’s Bernardo Arévalo in 2023.

Lula’s campaign said the sudden US suspension of consular services was “yet another extremely serious development in the interference in Brazilian elections by the US government,” alleging that it was “coordinated, by all indications, directly by the brothers Flávio and Eduardo Bolsonaro.”

The filing noted that even “the legislative branch of the foreign state itself… recognizes the pattern of external pressure.” It pointed to a letter sent earlier this week by Democratic US Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Peter Welch (Vt.), and Tim Kaine (Va.) to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, which said that “the administration’s most recent actions point toward an effort to interfere with, and potentially undermine, Brazil’s general election in October.”

A man wearing a mask depicting US President Donald Trump attends a rally of Brazilian right-wing presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro in Goiania, Brazil, on September 27, 2026. (Photo by Sergio Lima/AFP via Getty Images)

The first round of Brazil’s election will begin on Sunday. Should neither candidate receive 50% of the vote, a runoff between the top two candidates will be held on October 25. Several major polls show Lula with a narrow first-round lead entering Sunday, although others have the race effectively tied or Bolsonaro slightly ahead.

But Lula has also seized upon Trump’s meddling to portray Bolsonaro as a tool of foreign powers, drawing on a history of US-backed coups and election interference that have undermined Brazilian democracy.

“Flávio Bolsonaro is Trump’s candidate and what Trump wants is to colonize Brazil, take our riches, steal our future and leave us in the dust,” said a campaign ad that began airing last week.



The Trump administration, for its part, has continued to double down on public overtures toward imperialist ambition. On Thursday, an official US State Department social media account reposted a video created in August glorifying the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine and declaring that “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.”

Dov H. Levin, a political scientist at the University of Hong Kong who recently published research on the effects of foreign election interference, told the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo that, if too overt, Trump’s intervention could backfire.

“There are cases of failure,” he said, “and cases where the reaction provoked by the intervention harms precisely the side it intended to help.”

White House turmoil as Stephen Miller pushed midterm voting machine seizures: report

David Edwards
October 2, 2026 

RAW STORY



White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller attends the 2026 White House Easter Egg Roll at the White House in Washington, D.C., on April 6, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller pushed to bring in the FBI and potentially seize more voting machines after investigators found no evidence of vote tampering ahead of the midterm elections.

The account comes from a Reuters investigation published Friday into an effort by President Donald Trump's administration to prove that voting machines were used to rig the 2020 election.

Reuters found the effort had two goals: to find that evidence and to use it to support sweeping changes to the American voting system.

The push came on Oct. 3, 2025, when Jason Wareham, chief executive of the contractor Mojave Research, briefed Miller, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and Tulsi Gabbard, then the director of national intelligence, he told Reuters.

He said his team had found weaknesses that could be fixed, including outdated software, but no evidence of hacking or altered votes.

Miller then pushed to bring in the FBI and potentially seize more machines, according to people familiar with the investigation. Wiles asked whether the team had uncovered any new evidence that the 2020 election was rigged.

Later that month, Gabbard's office sent the White House its own report, which also found no evidence that votes had been manipulated, Reuters reported.

The briefing capped months of work driven by Kurt Olsen, a Washington lawyer who had spent years promoting Trump's false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, according to Reuters.

In spring 2025, Gabbard's office formed a task force whose first project was to investigate the 2020 election, the report said. White House officials asked the office to work with Olsen, who held no government job at the time, according to two former officials.

Olsen was in near-daily contact with White House officials and shared election-related intelligence from inside the government with outside analysts, people familiar with the operation told Reuters. The White House said in a statement that the administration "carefully follows the law regarding access to sensitive information."

In June 2025, Wareham, an FBI agent and others copied data from a Dominion voting machine in Puerto Rico, where officials cooperated after scanner problems disrupted the island's 2024 elections, according to Reuters. Olsen had insisted on secrecy, saying he faced resistance inside the administration to reopening the 2020 election.

Wareham said the job was a forensic exercise. Olsen wanted to search for traces of Smartmatic code that, under his theory, would show how Venezuela or China could manipulate Dominion machines, a claim courts have repeatedly rejected.

The White House told Reuters the investigation began after island officials raised concerns and was meant to find weaknesses, not to revisit the 2020 election. Reuters found that Olsen pushed it toward proving foreign manipulation.

By late summer 2025, Olsen had turned on Mojave Research, telling Trump the firm was secretly funded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros, Reuters reported. Mojave, Wareham and the Open Society Foundations, Soros' family philanthropy, denied any ties.

Gabbard's office ended Mojave's contract later that month, and Reuters could not determine why. Mojave said its work was halted before it could be completed.

Trump named Olsen White House director of election security and integrity in late October 2025, weeks after the briefing, Reuters reported.

What began with one machine in Puerto Rico grew into an investigation spanning Gabbard's office, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, the report said.

Olsen's first target was Fulton County, Georgia, where FBI agents on Jan. 28 seized every ballot cast in 2020, along with voter rolls, ballot images and machine records, Reuters reported.

The case began with a referral from Olsen, according to an affidavit supporting the warrant. Agents removed about 650 boxes, and Gabbard attended the raid.

As administration officials pressed Olsen for evidence the election had been rigged, he blamed intelligence agencies for withholding what he needed, and his relationship with the White House deteriorated, the report found.

"Special government employees are limited to 130 days per calendar year," Olsen told Reuters of his May exit from the White House. "And my 130 days were up."


Olsen then joined federal prosecutors in Florida examining whether investigations into Trump, including the Russia probe and the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, were part of what Trump allies call a "grand conspiracy" to damage him, according to Reuters.

That probe also reaches former special counsel Jack Smith's investigation of Trump's attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, Reuters reported last month.

In December 2020, Olsen pressed then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to file a Supreme Court complaint to invalidate the electors for six swing states, Rosen later testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee, CNN reported.

"You're going to force me to call the president and tell him you're recalcitrant," Olsen told Rosen after the acting attorney general resisted, according to the testimony.


Olsen told Reuters he stepped down from the Florida probe on Monday but remains at the Justice Department. He declined to say why.

"I am still at DOJ and not participating in that investigation," Olsen said.

With the midterms a month away, some election officials fear Olsen's mission laid the groundwork for the administration to seize voting equipment or ballots, Reuters reported. Some are hiring lawyers and drafting emergency court filings in case federal agents demand machines or records.

Peter Ticktin, a Florida lawyer and longtime Trump ally, believes the president's best chance to force changes before the midterms would be to declare a national emergency, or even martial law if China or other foreign powers exploited flaws in voting machines, according to Reuters.

"We're at a crossroads," Ticktin said.

‘Looks Like They’re Firing Whistleblowers’: Alarm as OpenAI Reportedly Ousts Safety Experts

“Sam Altman says we need to slow down development to ensure the safety of humanity,” one campaigner said of OpenAI’s CEO. “Yet he is allegedly firing the very people hired to keep us safe.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks at the Federal Reserve in Washington, DC, on July 22, 2025.
(Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Oct 01, 2026

COMMON DREAMS

San Francisco-based artificial intelligence firm OpenAI has “parted ways” with three safety researchers who allegedly shared “confidential company information,” The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, prompting fresh alarm among critics who accuse the ChatGPT maker of sidelining internal warnings about the risks posed by its increasingly powerful AI.

People reportedly familiar with the matter told the Journal that OpenAI recently informed employees it had terminated the three researchers, who it accused of sharing the information with “a third-party AI safety organization.”

OpenAI did not identify the researchers, the outside organization, or the information allegedly shared. A company spokesperson told the newspaper that “our investigation confirmed that these individuals mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures, violating our policies and breaking the trust essential to our work.”

The Journal’s Maxwell Zeff—who authored the report with Keach Hagey and Berber Jin—subsequently identified the three safety team members as Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni.

“Looks like they’re firing whistleblowers,” Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) said in response to the report. “What are they hiding?”

“I’ll be sending OpenAI a demand for transparency,” he added.

Shaunna Thomas is the executive director of Guardrails Alliance, a super political action committee made up of “workers, organizers, policy experts, and everyday people who believe the most powerful technology ever built shouldn’t be controlled by a handful of unaccountable billionaires.”

Thomas called the Journal report “the latest example of OpenAI advocating for safety measures in the public eye, but actively making decisions and lobbying against those efforts behind closed doors.”

“Sam Altman says we need to slow down development to ensure the safety of humanity,” Thomas said, referring to OpenAI’s CEO. “Yet he is allegedly firing the very people hired to keep us safe. When deep insiders are sounding the alarm, history tells us to listen. OpenAI is not only ignoring their warnings, it’s punishing them.”

“In the absence of clear regulations, insiders are a crucial factor in keeping the rest of us safe as these models continue to do unpredictable things,” she added. “We must stand with rank-and- file employees and fight for their protection.”

The new allegations come amid an intensifying debate over whether OpenAI and other frontier AI companies can adequately police themselves.

As Common Dreams recently reported, OpenAI and other AI firms are investigating tens of thousands of security incidents, including episodes involving attempts to bypass guardrails, escape sandboxes, hijack websites, and even access government systems.

In July, an OpenAI model autonomously breached the systems of the open-source platform Hugging Face during an internal cybersecurity test. Experts warned that the incident demonstrated the dangers of relying on voluntary corporate safeguards.

It’s not just OpenAI; in 2026 alone, companies including Google, Meta, and Anthropic have reported incidents of AI autonomously escaping supposedly isolated testing environments and targeting real-world systems.

AI safety campaigners and some Democratic lawmakers this week lambasted President Donald Trump, who, after meeting with Big Tech executives including OpenAI president Greg Brockman, dismissed the lack of legally binding commitments regarding AI regulation by saying he trusted the corporate leaders’ “morally binding” self-policing pledge.

Elon Musk, CEO of the artificial intelligence company xAI, has said that such incidents “will happen frequently ⁠as AI becomes smarter and more agentic,” a reference to systems’ ability to independently act toward accomplishing specific goals without meaningful human control.

Experts say such autonomous hacks underscore the problem of AI alignment. As AI progresses toward artificial general intelligence—a still-hypothetical point at which it matches or surpasses human cognitive ability at virtually any intellectual, creative, or physical task—the challenge of ensuring that advanced systems reliably pursue goals that match what humans actually want becomes increasingly difficult and, many insiders believe, dangerous to the point of posing an existential risk to humanity.

Last month, Casar and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) unveiled legislation that would pause development of advanced AI.

Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) also said this week that he is seeking to introduce legislation to at least temporarily ban recursive self-improvement, or AI that is capable of improving itself and modifying its objectives without meaningful human input.

And on Thursday, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) put forth a bill that would compel every AI company operating in the US to obtain a public charter.

“This issue is of monumental consequence,” said Sanders. “I’d rather be called an alarmist than a father or grandfather who is asleep at the wheel.”

AI Giants Probe ‘Tens of Thousands’ of Security Incidents—Some Involving Government Sites

“Insane that we allow this,” one journalist said of the rapidly advancing technology. “Sleepwalking into disaster or worse.”


OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attends the United Nations Security Council meeting on artificial intelligence at UN Headquarters in New York City on September 23, 2026.
(Photo by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Sep 27, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


Just days after a United Nations panel of experts warned that current artificial intelligence guardrails are “unraveling,” Axios reported Saturday that security researchers, along with the firms Anthropic and OpenAI, “are investigating tens of thousands of incidents,” including meddling with US government websites, amid growing calls for immediate action to rein in the technology.

Since OpenAI revealed in July that its models autonomously breached the systems of the open-source platform Hugging Face during internal testing, the firm—plus Anthropic, Google, and Meta—has disclosed some additional incidents.

“After the Hugging Face incident, we committed to conducting a much broader review of actions taken by our models during training and evaluation and to being transparent about our findings,” OpenAI said on social media Friday. “Given the scale of the review required, and the need to assess each case, we expect this work will take months to complete.”



Meanwhile, “Anthropic has commissioned a third-party safety organization to examine the behavior of its models,” Axios detailed Saturday, noting that across both firms, “the sheer number of incidents, which occurred in recent months in internal testing and the real world, indicates that the problem is orders of magnitude more complex than what is publicly known.”

“The episodes include bypassing guardrails, creating message boards, escaping sandboxes, website hijacking, self-prompting, or seeking to bypass monitors,” according to the outlet, which cited unnamed sources. “Many have yet to become public as security researchers continue to investigate.”

Among the incidents announced by OpenAI—which has paused training on its “most capable” models—are 53 cases in which images uploaded by ChatGPT users were leaked before “mitigations and safeguards” were implemented. Reuters noted Friday that the company “declined to say when the images were posted” and “if the images were AI-generated or identified real people.”



Earlier this week, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City that an OpenAI agent hacked into his country’s national healthcare database, the first known case of AI hacking a government site.

“I spoke with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, to express Australia’s extreme concern about this incident,” Albanese said. “And I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred.”

Then, the research lab Transluce said Friday that its independent investigation found that apparent OpenAI agents unsuccessfully tried to hack the US Department of Education website. OpenAI confirmed that, as The New York Times put it, the company’s “artificial intelligence went rogue and meddled with” not only that government site but also those of the US Department of Commerce and the Securities and Exchange Commission—though “none of the incidents were breaches.”

The revelation fueled fresh demands for action in the United States—even calls to force members of the US House of Representatives to return to Washington, DC, where they are not expected until after the November midterm elections.



“Rogue agents are now trying to infiltrate our own government systems—this is cause for real concern,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) said on social media. “Congress must come back to Washington and pass bills like my bipartisan Stop Rogue AI Act so we can protect American families and our national security.”

It’s not just Gottheimer and Rep. Mike Lawler’s (R-NY) bill; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) have recently introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act. However, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Republican Big Tech-backed President Donald Trump have signaled an unwillingness to pursue regulations on AI.

Universal healthcare campaigner Melanie D’Arrigo said Saturday that “if you were caught hacking into government websites, you’d be sent to prison. When companies who are donors to Trump are caught hacking into government websites, they’ll likely just get more tax breaks. This is what a tiered system of justice looks like.”

After Axios revealed that tens of thousands of incidents are being probed, economist Dean Baker similarly said that “this is criminal activity and is being done for profit. If we had a real Justice Department, Altman and his cronies at OpenAI (or is ‘OpenSI’ now?) would be looking at serious time.”



Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) declared that “it is imperative that Speaker Johnson hold urgent and bipartisan hearings on advanced AI. The CEOs and engineers of these companies should be testifying in front of the American people. We can’t wait until November to regulate this rogue industry.”

Under Jayapal Bill, Every AI Company Would Need a Public Charter to Operate in the US

“For too long, we’ve allowed a few Big Tech companies to dominate the market.”

US Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) speaks to reporters in Washington, DC on March 3, 2026.
(Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Oct 01, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Thursday unveiled a bill aimed at reining in the artificial intelligence industry that would force every AI company operating in the US to obtain a public charter.

According to Jayapal (D-Wash.), the charter system will be similar to the one long used in the US to regulate banks, which must submit to certain regulatory obligations before being allowed to operate.

“The crux of this bill is simple,” said Jayapal. “If you want to be an AI company in this country, you have to obtain a public charter that has a broad set of terms and conditions to operate and ensure public benefit without the harms.”

The Washington Democrat said the charter approach was needed given the broad reach large technology companies already have over every aspect of life in the US, and she argued it would be a more proactive alternative to the piecemeal approach US lawmakers have taken to regulating Big Tech.

“For too long, we’ve allowed a few Big Tech companies to dominate the market,” she said. “They have used mass surveillance to steal private information, labor, and creative work, building trillion-dollar empires on our tracked personal lives. AI corporations and Big Tech are now following that same playbook.”

Under the charter system, tech companies would be banned from practices such as surveillance pricing to charge individual consumers different prices based on their personal data and financial histories.

The system would also establish stronger liabilities for AI companies that commit harmful acts, and particularly egregious actions could be punished by removal of firms’ charters, which would essentially be a corporate death penalty.

Jayapal’s proposal would also put the government in charge of every step of the AI safety review process and would include “round-the-clock federal oversight, testing in government facilities and approval to release, adversarial stress tests, and a government-controlled kill switch,” according to her office.

The proposed framework earned praise from former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, who argued that American voters have already “paid an extraordinary price for Big Tech’s self-regulation.”

“For generations we have required banks, drug makers, and nuclear operators to meet public terms before they do business,” Khan added, “and AI companies should be no different.”

Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, also gave the Jayapal plan kudos, saying it would “establish desperately needed rules of the road, punish AI companies that release dangerous products, and create the clear public benefit that the American people are calling for.”

“Companies have continually pulled the rug out from under families, workers, and small businesses to build powerful and unaccountable Big Tech monopolies that dictate to us how we should live our own lives,” Haworth emphasized. “Enough is enough.”

Although President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) have publicly opposed legislative restrictions on the AI industry, the bill comes as Democrats are aiming to win congressional majorities in the November midterm elections.

‘Stand With the People’: Progressive Caucus Leader Calls on All Democrats to Reject AI Billionaire Cash

Rep. Greg Casar said progressives’ effort to make a leading artificial intelligence super PAC “as toxic as AIPAC” is having an impact.


OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg attend a state dinner hosted by President Donald Trump on September 24, 2026.
(Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Oct 01, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Wednesday urged all Democrats to reject campaign cash from billionaires whose wealth stems from the artificial intelligence industry, following news that the president of OpenAI abandoned plans to donate millions more to a super PAC that has funneled money to members of both parties.

The OpenAI executive, Greg Brockman, wrote in an internal message obtained by The New York Times that the super PAC, Leading the Future (LTF), “keeps reflecting on the company and [has] become so much of a distraction for people here.” Brockman noted that he and his wife have donated $25 million to the super PAC—which opposes strong AI safety regulations—but “have no plans to donate more at this time.”



Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), a leading supporter of AI regulation in Congress, said in response to Brockman’s message that “the pressure is working.”

“Progressives have worked hard to make LTF as toxic as AIPAC,” Casar wrote, referring to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “Now one of its biggest donors is backing out. Democrats need to stand with the people and reject AI billionaires’ money.”

Super PACs bankrolled by AI companies and billionaires have become some of the biggest spenders in the 2026 midterms amid widespread voter backlash against the construction of resource-draining AI data centers—and against the industry more broadly.

The Times reported on Tuesday that LTF and Public First Action, which is aligned with the AI firm Anthropic, have spent a combined $52.6 million on “safe seats—those that are unlikely to change party hands but that often feature intense intraparty contests.”

“The big AI players have also spent more heavily for Democrats than Republicans,” the Times noted. “They have boosted candidates who align with their agendas, helped defeat those they see as hostile to it and ingratiated themselves with front-runners who are likely to be in positions of power in the next Congress to make decisions critical to their bottom lines.”

“The Times analysis of federal advertising and campaign outreach expenditures made by the four major super PACs during this cycle showed that they have spent far more money in support of Democrats—$28 million to back 21 Democrats and nearly $19 million to boost 30 Republicans—and that the candidates they backed almost always won,” the newspaper added.

The Lever reported last month that a five-person commission on AI convened by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) “is filled with Democrats who have received outsized financial support this election cycle from AI-linked super PACs, executives, and investors.”

Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), Valerie Foushee (D-NC), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ), and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) are the commission’s members.

“The spending seems intended to shape the party’s policy response to AI, particularly if Democrats win a majority in November,” The Lever observed.

Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump met with leading AI industry executives who have collectively donated more than $220 million to his super PAC and other projects associated with the president, according to a new analysis by the advocacy group Public Citizen. Trump said following the meeting that the AI industry shouldn’t have any government guardrails and should be allowed to police itself because “they love our country.”

“Big Tech executives have effectively bought themselves a seat at the AI regulatory table,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen. “Actually, they have bought the table. As a result, as public anxieties about AI risks—to children, political integrity, jobs, the environment—skyrocket, and as revelations mount of AI company failures to impose adequate safeguards on their own technologies, the Trump administration delivers meaningless agreements that impose no restraints on the out-of-control tech oligarchs.”

Citing ‘Civilizational Extinction Risk,’ Khanna to Intro Bill to Ban Recursive AI

“The tech lords use jargon to confuse. They count on the tech illiteracy of the elected class. They hope we won’t look under the hood,” said US Rep. Ro Khanna.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) delivers remarks during a National Press Club Headliners Newsmaker event on April 14, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)\

Brad Reed
Sep 29, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

US Rep. Ro Khanna announced plans on Monday to introduce what he described as “the most comprehensive... legislation to date” regulating the artificial intelligence industry.

In an interview with CNBC, Khanna (D-Calif.) said that he wanted to enact at least a temporary ban on recursive AI that is capable of improving itself and modifying its objectives without human input.

Such a ban would be in effect until the federal government had created proper guardrails on the technology, CNBC reported.

“There’s actually a civilizational extinction risk,” Khanna told CNBC, referring to the dangers of recursive AI. “There’s a safety risk of loss of control, and then there’s a misuse risk, and we need to take both seriously.”

Khanna’s bill would also create a new federal agency tasked with crafting and enforcing safety measures on AI models, with independent auditors embedded in every frontier lab that would report directly to the agency.

The legislation wouldn’t just create regulations for the AI industry, but also criminal penalties for AI developers who “disable safeguards, kill switches, logging or containment systems, or who knowingly deploy an unauthorized system,” CNBC reported.

Promoting the coming bill in a Tuesday social media post, Khanna argued that Big Tech could not be trusted to regulate itself.

“The tech lords use jargon to confuse,” Khanna wrote. “They count on the tech illiteracy of the elected class. They hope we won’t look under the hood. They know they can’t gaslight me.”

While multiple polls have shown that putting guardrails on the AI industry is politically popular, Republican Party leaders have said that no regulations for the industry are coming so long as they control the White House and the US Congress.

In a Tuesday interview with CNBC, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he hoped that any guardrails put on AI are “voluntary” on the part of Big Tech companies.

Two weeks ago, Johnson said in an interview on CNN that federal regulations of the industry made little sense because “Congress is obviously less qualified than the people who are pushing this frontier to know the ins and outs of it.”

President Donald Trump on Tuesday expressed a similar sentiment, telling reporters outside the White House that Big Tech could be trusted to be responsible with the powerful technology it is creating.

“They’re outstanding people,” Trump said of the tech executives. “They don’t want anything to go wrong. I mean, their companies are at stake, if something goes wrong, their companies are at stake. They’re not going to let that happen. This is going to be all for the good... they’re really going to be policing each other.”



Earlier this month, Trump suggested in a social media post that his own intellect was singlehandedly capable of regulating AI, a technology so complicated that even its own creators have acknowledged difficulties in understanding it.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT,” Trump wrote, “and the USA has that, in spades!”

Trump’s hands-off approach to regulating AI isn’t just being challenged by Democrats such as Khanna.

According to a Monday report from The Associated Press, Pope Leo XIV reiterated his call for placing safeguards on AI to ensure that it benefits humanity.

Specifically, the US-born pope pointed to recent “concerns raised by many of the experts, specialists in AI,” which he said “should be taken seriously.”

“I don’t think that that is ‘fake news’ as some have said,” the pope added, in a veiled reference to Trump, “to try and cause whether financial or other some other kind of benefit.”

Mike Johnson Blasted for Dismissing US Voter Concerns About AI Data Centers as ‘Chinese Psyop’

“No, Mr. Johnson,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders. “The 75% of Americans who oppose data centers, including a majority of Republicans, have not fallen victim to a ‘Chinese psyop.’”


US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) holds a press conference at the Capitol Hill Club on September 15, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Sep 29, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

They’ve been shown to raise electricity bills, pollute drinking water, do little to boost local employment while threatening millions of jobs in a variety of industries, and top executives have warned that the technology they support could wipe out all of humanity by the end of the decade.

But rather than take widespread public opposition to artificial intelligence data centers at face value, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced he had pinpointed what’s behind the fact that 75% of Americans oppose the centers being built in their communities: “a Chinese psyop.”

Fox News anchor Cheryl Casone asked Johnson on Monday about claims from “several tech executives and lawmakers” who say that the nationwide pushback against data centers—which President Donald Trump and Republicans are pushing to expand—is “coming from China.”

The House speaker accused Democrats of fearmongering about AI and claiming that “everyone will die if we don’t win”—although the gravest warnings about the technology’s capabilities have actually come from the industry itself.

“It is a Chinese psyop, I really believe that. That’s not a conspiracy theory,” said Johnson.



Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has led efforts to pass bills imposing a nationwide moratorium on new large-scale data centers and a ban on artificial superintelligence, seized on Johnson’s comments Tuesday.

“No, Mr. Johnson,” said the progressive senator, who’s previously been baselessly accused on Fox News of working with China to harm the AI industry. “The 75% of Americans who oppose data centers, including a majority of Republicans, have not fallen victim to a ‘Chinese psyop.’ They are rightly concerned about AI billionaires raising their electricity bills, destroying the environment, and threatening humanity.”

While some influence campaigns from Russia and China have pushed negative messaging about AI data centers, one former official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told The New York Times in July that foreign countries are not “manufacturing” outrage about AI in the US, which has been made clear as communities have rallied to block nearly 120 projects worth $198 billion, according to Data Center Watch.

On Fox News, Johnson repeated a comment he made after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the development of AI should be “paced” as companies have found that their models are able to hack websites without being directed to and are capable of “recursive self-improvement,” or creating the next generation of AI on their own.

At the time, the House speaker said the industry should be able to regulate itself, lest China “overlap us” on AI development.

“We do not need a moratorium. We do not need to jump in and hyper-regulate this because we’ll lose the race to China,” Johnson said Monday. “The innovation is important to continue.”

On the political podcast “Pod Save America,” co-host Jon Lovett said that even if China did see a benefit to fanning the flames of widespread disapproval of data centers, “it wouldn’t change the fact that these companies have gone about this in the most ham-fisted and kind of arrogant way.”

AI companies have “dismissed the concerns of people” and have “tried to buy and sell politicians to try to get around persuading people that they might want these data centers in their communities,” he said.

“The objections are very real from people who A) don’t want these things in their backyard, and B) have come to expect that the benefits that accrue to the largest and most profitable corporations in the do not redound to the benefit of the broader community,” said Lovett. “And that is not something China could convince us of.”

‘As Dangerous As It Is Absurd’: Trump Ripped for ‘Self-Policing’ AI Industry Accord

“Self-regulation?” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren. “That’s a recipe for disaster.”


US President Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) hold a press conference with the leaders including Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and others following a meeting on artificial intelligence outside the West Wing of the White House Washington, DC on September 29, 2026.
(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Sep 29, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

As details from US President Donald Trump’s White House meeting with Big Tech executives emerged on Tuesday, including a pledge on artificial intelligence safety, campaigners and Democrats in Congress continued calling for stronger AI protections.

After the gathering, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform a “Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities” signed by him, billionaire Elon Musk—a former member of the administration who leads multiple companies—Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, and OpenAI’s Greg Brockman.

The accord came out of a gathering that included the president and other top officials as well as over a dozen tech leaders, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and representatives from Microsoft and Palantir. It states that “every company is responsible for developing its own technology safely and in a way that builds trust with customers and the public.”



The document goes on to detail “four layers of controls and audits” that each company developing AI—or “super intelligence (SI), as Trump directed his administration to call it in a Tuesday executive order—should implement, including robust internal controls to monitor capabilities and alignment, internal teams to ensure safeguards are operating as intended, partnerships with outside auditors, and an independent committee of the board of directors to receive reports on problems and their fixes.

Before Trump released the accord, he addressed the media alongside some officials and executives. Asked if the agreement is binding in any way, the president responded, “I think it’s morally binding.”

Beside him, Zuckerberg—whose company has faced legal issues over its social media platforms—laid out the broad strokes of the accord, which he framed as “a start,” suggesting there is more to come.



Since OpenAI revealed in July that its models autonomously breached the systems of the open-source platform Hugging Face during internal testing, the firm—plus Anthropic, Google, and Meta—has disclosed additional incidents. Axios reported over the weekend that Anthropic and OpenAI alone “are investigating tens of thousands of incidents.”

Experts in the industry and beyond have increasingly expressed concerns, with a United Nations panel stressing in a report about the Hugging Face incident that current AI guardrails are “unraveling,” and one Anthropic researcher quitting earlier this month and warning that the rapidly advancing technology “could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

While some members of Congress have responded by introducing bills aimed at reining in the industry and establishing mandatory safeguards, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.)—who was part of Tuesday’s meeting—has instead called for voluntary commitments. He’s also dismissed mounting public concerns about AI data centers raising electricity bills, polluting drinking water, and threatening jobs, even suggesting that the grassroots pushback in various communities is “a Chinese psyop.”



The president—whose inauguration was dubbed “a coronation of our country’s descent into oligarchy” because of all the ultrarich attendees, including many of the men at the White House on Tuesday—has also made clear that he opposes a legislative route. According to The Associated Press, Trump said Tuesday that “I think I’m seeing tremendous self-policing. And they understand that they have to self-police.”

Progressive US Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) responded to the event on social media Tuesday, writing: “Self-regulation? That’s a recipe for disaster.”

Rep. Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY) said that “the American people are deeply concerned on the direction unregulated AI is taking our country, and they deserve transparent answers from the men with their hands on the wheel. Instead, all we get is another closed-door meeting, and more promises made and broken in secret. We cannot say exactly what they schemed, today. But I am certain we’ll see the consequences soon enough.”



Mitch Jones, deputy director of Food & Water Action, a group that has spearheaded fights against superpolluting AI data centers, said that “the notion that a manically profit-driven AI industry will safely regulate itself is as dangerous as it is absurd—akin to claiming an arsonist would make a good firefighter. Trump’s only concern is doing the bidding of his Big Tech billionaire friends.”

“Trump’s rejection of the overwhelming opposition to AI data center construction throughout the country is political incompetence of the highest order,” Jones continued, looking toward the November midterms, which are just five weeks away. “His obstinance will no doubt cost him and his party deeply in the coming elections.”

“We can’t have politicians giving the tech oligarchs free rein,” he argued. “We need political leaders that will decisively rein them in. Our leaders must stand with us and say ‘no’ to so-called super intelligence, and put a halt to the massive hyperscale data centers powering this runaway industry.”