Supreme Court Blocks Trump Mail Voting Limits; Trump Rejects AI Guardrails

NPR reported that the high court’s ruling ensures the U.S. Postal Service will continue delivering ballots as usual. Voting by mail has already started in Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin, and more states are set to follow. Voters eligible to vote by mail may have ballots on the way; those who need to request one should check their state’s deadline, and election officials suggest sending completed ballots back as soon as possible.

The AI dispute unfolded after the leaders of Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI companies spent the weekend warning of the dangers of advanced AI and calling for a slowdown in model development. CNBC reported that Trump filled his social media feed on Monday with posts undermining those efforts. “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote. His opposition creates another challenge for Anthropic and OpenAI, which are trying to grow fast enough to justify almost trillion-dollar valuations while responding to concerns that their technology is advancing so fast it could spin out of human control.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay over the weekend urging AI companies to slow their pace of development. CNBC reported that his call came after safety researchers Jacob Coxon and Joe Benton resigned from his lab, citing shared fears inside the industry that AI systems could potentially kill all humans. Amodei proposed a plan for auditing and regulating AI without “sacrificing commercial advantage” or harming U.S. national security. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX’s Elon Musk took the rare step of publicly agreeing with Amodei and each other.

Amodei called for model evaluators to embed with frontier AI companies and for the establishment of safety standards among democratic countries, with coordination between democratic and authoritarian governments “to the extent this is possible.” He said Anthropic is committed to giving evaluators “employee-like access” to monitor and verify the safety of the company’s models. The third-party evaluator he cited as an example was METR, a nonprofit founded by a former OpenAI and DeepMind researcher that says its mission is to “develop scientific methods to assess catastrophic risks stemming from AI systems’ autonomous capabilities and enable good decision-making about their development.” Only a handful of other firms are in the space, including FAR.AI, AVERI and Apollo Research.

Tom Wheeler, a former chair of the Federal Communications Commission and now a visiting fellow at Brookings, told CNBC that the companies cannot be responsible for effectively regulating themselves. “Who makes the decision about standards? Who makes the decision about who’s going to do the evaluation? Who makes the decision about enforcement?” Wheeler said. He said the latest proposal for industry oversight was so vague that it amounted to an “empty vessel.” CNBC reported that virtually every major U.S. industry is subject to stricter federal oversight, but AI is the stark exception, regulated for the most part at the state level. California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed multiple AI bills into law, including Adam’s Law, which requires AI chatbot makers to protect minors from harmful interactions.

Trump signed an executive order in June asking AI companies to voluntarily submit their models to the government before release, but he is adamantly opposing any federal regulation and insists that fears about AI amount to a “hoax.” “Concerning AI, when, in the History of Business, did anyone see the Leaders of an Industry call for Regulation that, if strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy?” he wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday. Trump’s former AI czar, David Sacks, continued to criticize what he has repeatedly called Anthropic’s “regulatory capture” campaign. In a weekend post responding to Amodei’s essay, Sacks said the two leading model developers should police themselves rather than asking the government to do it. “If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible,” he wrote.

Representatives from Anthropic and OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment, CNBC reported. The Trump administration has taken the stance that anything that impedes AI development in the U.S. benefits chief adversary China, the world’s second-biggest economy. Across the private sector, the president has shown a willingness to try and hurt companies that take a stand against him, said Jessica Ji, a senior research analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Anthropic has already experienced such treatment, getting blacklisted by the Department of Defense earlier this year, and then in June being ordered by the government to disable access to two models to comply with an export control.

NPR reported that Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon are joining forces across their political poles at the “Pro-Human Assembly” in Washington, D.C., to address concerns about artificial intelligence. They aim to urge Congress to act quickly to curb AI’s impact. Trump disagrees with criticism of AI and data centers, calling the pushback a “sick conspiracy” that would benefit China, an AI competitor. NPR’s Emily Feng told Up First that there is a debate in the global AI industry over whether Chinese companies can surpass the United States, and concern over whether Beijing would even want to develop a super-powerful AI, as it is arguably not in its best interest to develop a technology that might threaten humanity. The current discussion highlights conflicting assumptions behind Trump’s pro-tech, pro-business approach, Feng added. Just last year, the president let Chinese companies buy a key semiconductor chip, even though there were warnings that the country needed it to meet its AI goals.

NPR also reported that the Kennedy Center’s board says the arts institution faces bankruptcy and might close as soon as Tuesday. NPR obtained a document outlining this plan ahead of a board meeting set for today. It is slated for the same day as a status hearing set by Judge Christopher Cooper, who is overseeing a lawsuit from Rep. Joyce Beatty seeking to halt the center’s renaming to honor Trump. The Kennedy Center says Trump is the only one who can raise enough funds to help with its financial issues, which is why the board thinks he deserves to have his name on the building, NPR’s Anastasia Tsioulcas said. Big nonprofit institutions like the Kennedy Center usually rely on earned revenue from ticket sales, donations and some government grants. Both artists and audiences have been leaving the arts center over the past year, saying they believe it has become too politicized under Trump. Its live events calendar is a fraction of what it used to be, and donations have also dried up. Tsioulcas said it seems likely that there is a real and dire financial crisis at the Kennedy Center, and the question now is how to manage it and whether adding the president’s name will help solve it.

Editor's Summary

The Supreme Court blocked Trump’s mail-in voting restrictions, and Trump rejected AI industry calls for slower development and regulation as Anthropic and OpenAI face safety scrutiny. NPR also reported that the Kennedy Center may face bankruptcy, with a board meeting and a lawsuit over renaming. The developments highlight tensions over election rules, AI oversight, and the politicization of cultural institutions.