How should we balance the growth of AI technology with safety and responsibility in our communities?

President Trump is as all-in on AI as a politician could be: all gas, no brakes, and zero interest in hand-wringing about dystopian risks or public disdain. Democrats are as conflicted on AI as a party could be: skeptical of the labs, spooked by their warnings, but split on whether to shut it all down. Why it matters: This staggering divide makes consensus on federal AI regulation almost unimaginable this year — and probably through early 2029, regardless of who wins control of Congress. Zoom in: Trump has governed as the AI president from Day 1, applying the same doctrine to models and the data centers that power them — build faster, regulate less, beat China. Speaking in Ireland on Sunday, he dismissed new safety warnings as the work of "a lot of negative forces . bringing up things that won't happen" — and reduced the stakes to one line: "Whoever wins AI wins."It's unclear which "negative forces" Trump has in mind: Calls to slow the race — or "pace the frontier" — are now coming from the leaders of America's premier AI labs, including Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google. Between the lines: Trump's accelerationist allies, including venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, see the safety alarms as a cynical ploy by the field's dominant players to lock in favorable regulations. David Sacks, Trump's former AI czar and a leading voice for the administration's hands-off approach, has a simple answer: Slow yourselves down.If OpenAI and Anthropic truly think the frontier is moving too fast, Sacks argues, they can decelerate on their own without using Washington to force competitors to do the same. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) echoed Sacks' argument that the labs don't need Congress to slow themselves down — and rejected calls for an emergency moratorium. Johnson said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he'd recall the House and put AI regulation to a vote "if we had the solution," but warned Congress against rushing into rules it doesn't yet understand.His preferred fi