Biden admin to announce AI rule to ‘enhance’ national security and economic might
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(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration is rolling out a new rule that is aimed at responsible use of artificial intelligence technology.
According to a press release about the rule, this action “streamlines licensing hurdles” and “provides clarity to allied and partner nations about how they can benefit from AI.”
The action “is designed to safeguard the most advanced AI technology and ensure that it stays out of the hands of our foreign adversaries, but also enabling the broad diffusion and sharing of the benefits with partner countries,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said during a call with reporters about the move.
“The focus is on the frontier, the most advanced AI models and the largest compute clusters,” she added.
The rule has a three-pronged approach, Raimondo said: “expanding and updating controls for advanced AI chips,” “creating a new set of controls for the most advanced, closed AI model weights make sure they don’t fall into the hands of our adversaries” and “imposing security conditions to safeguard critical technology and the largest AI clusters.”
She noted that some industries would not be impacted because they are not crucial to national security, including supply chain activities and gaming chips.
Raimondo said that the rule is very complex and, because of that, the comment period is 120 days, longer than usual timeline for rule-making. She also noted that this rule comes with just about one week left of President Joe Biden’s presidency.
“I fully expect the next administration may make changes as a result of that input,” Raimondo said. “So we we’ve provided for 120 days, which is very long comment period, and we provided for one year, 365 days for compliance for the standards at AI data centers to make sure industry is fully cited on the new rules and able to comply.”
But one official on the call said this effort has bipartisan support, especially because this is something that concerns national security.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that this rule has been in development for a long time with key shareholders.
“There are many leading AI developers who are projecting that AI capabilities will exceed human capabilities in fields from physics to biology to electrical engineering in the very near future, and that has economic and technological implications,” Sullivan told reporters, “but it also has fairly profound national security implications as well. So from our perspective, we have a national security responsibility to do two things, first, to preserve, protect and extend American AI leadership, particularly vis a vis strategic competitors.”
(WASHINGTON) — The deadline has quietly passed on Attorney General Pam Bondi delivering a report to President Donald Trump on whether any leftover Biden administration policies infringe on Americans’ right to bear arms. It came just days after Democratic leaders sent her a letter suggesting there is “plainly no need for any new plan of action.”
Trump signed an executive order on Feb. 7 after making campaign promises to gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA) that “no one will lay a finger on your firearms.”
The president instructed Bondi to “examine all orders, regulations, guidance, plans, international agreements, and other actions of executive departments and agencies” and determine if any of them violate the Second Amendment.
“The Second Amendment is an indispensable safeguard of security and liberty. It has preserved the right of the American people to protect ourselves, our families, and our freedoms since the founding of our great Nation,” Trump’s executive order reads. “Because it is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans, the right to keep and bear arms must not be infringed.”
The 30-day mark for Bondi to report back to Trump through his domestic policy director would have been this past Sunday.
Andrew Willinger, executive director of the Center for Firearms Law at Duke University School of Law, told ABC News the broadly written executive order “signals to me that this isn’t a top priority” for the Trump administration.
“Obviously, if there were things that were on the administration’s radar as possibly violating the Second Amendment or violating the rights of gun owners in some way, they could have started to roll those back right away and wouldn’t have needed to take this intermediate step of issuing a directive to the Attorney General to figure out what those were,” Willinger said. “That suggests that there’s nothing out there that the administration viewed as so pressing that they have to get rid of it right away.”
‘Perfectly consistent with the 2nd Amendment’
After Trump signed the executive order, NRA Executive Vice President Doug Hamlin released a statement praising the president’s move.
“Promises made to law-abiding gun owners are being kept by President Donald J. Trump,” Hamlin said. “NRA members were instrumental, turning out in record numbers to secure his victory, and he is proving worthy of their votes, faith and confidence in his first days in office.”
John Commerford, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, also released a statement, saying, “After a long four years, law-abiding gun owners no longer have to worry about being the target of an anti-gun radical administration. NRA looks forward to the advances and restoration of our rights that will come from President Trump’s respect for the Constitution.”
It is unclear whether or not Bondi met the deadline on delivering the report — nothing had been publicly released as of Wednesday. When ABC News asked this week about the Bondi’s pending plan of action, Department of Justice officials said they would check but had no immediate information on the report’s status. The White House also did not respond to ABC News’ inquiry about Bondi’s pending report.
Earlier this month, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Georgia, ranking member of the House subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, sent Bondi a letter.
“We are determined to protect our communities against lethal gun crime in a manner consistent with the Second Amendment,” they wrote.
The letter said that if Bondi carried out her examination “objectively and in good faith” she’ll find that actions taken by the previous administration to fight gun violence are “perfectly consistent with the Second Amendment.”
“There is plainly no need for any new plan of action to, in the words of the executive order, ‘protect the Second Amendment rights of all Americans,'” the letter said.
In his executive order, Trump instructed Bondi that in addition to reviewing all presidential actions taken on gun control from January 2021 to January 2025, he wanted her to review rules about firearms and federal firearm licensing implemented by the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).
Trump specifically asked Bondi to review the ATF’s “enhanced regulatory enforcement policy” — also called the “zero tolerance policy” — implemented in 2021 under Biden and former Attorney General Merrick Garland to identify federal firearms dealers who violate the 1968 Gun Control Act.
Under the policy, firearms dealers had their licenses revoked for willfully transferring firearms to prohibited people, failing to conduct the required background checks, falsifying records and failing to respond to a gun trace request. The policy prompted several lawsuits from gun dealers who argued their licenses were revoked over minor clerical errors.
Raskin and McBath claimed that in the three years since the policy was implemented, about 0.3% of the nation’s roughly 130,000 federal gun dealers had their licenses revoked.
“Through this policy, ATF has enforced the Gun Control Act as passed by Congress and had revoked the licenses of a tiny fraction of gun dealers who willfully violated the law,” Raskin and McBath said in their letter to Bondi. “The ATF’s enhanced regulatory policy has not prevented a single American who may lawfully possess a firearm from exercising his or her Second Amendment rights.”
The ATF reported that in fiscal year 2023, the agency found 1,531 violations after conducting 8,689 firearm compliance inspections. The inspections, according to the ATF, prompted 667 warning letters and 170 revocations.
“Law-abiding gun dealers remain in business throughout the country. In fact, there remain more gun dealers than there are locations of Starbucks, McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Burger King, Subway, and Chick-fil-A combined,” Raskin and McBath said in their letter.
The Democratic lawmakers asked Bondi to respond to their letter by the end of the business day on Monday, explaining what standards she will use to determine if policies taken by the Biden administration violate the Second Amendment and how she will ensure her plan of action “does not increase the risk of violent crime, including gun deaths.”
Majority of Americans favor stronger gun laws
A Pew Research Center poll released in July 2024 found that 61% of respondents agreed that it is too easy to legally obtain a gun and 58% favored stricter gun laws.
“We know that the vast majority of Americans — including gun owners and Trump voters — support basic safety laws that crack down on crime and keep all communities safe. These policies are in no way inconsistent with the Second Amendment,” Kris Brown, president of the gun-safety advocacy group Brady United, said in a statement after Trump signed the executive order.
Brown noted that policies under Biden included expanding background checks for gun buyers and “cracking down on rogue gun traffickers.”
“They must be continued if this President actually wants to achieve any of his campaign promises around reducing crime, cracking down on drug traffickers, and reducing the flow of trafficked weapons across the southern border,” Brown said.
In the aftermath of the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers, Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first major piece of federal gun reform to clear both chambers in 30 years.
The law enhanced background checks for gun buyers under the age of 21 by giving authorities up to 10 business days to review the juvenile and mental health records of young gun purchasers, and made it unlawful for someone to purchase a gun for someone who would fail a background check. This legislation closed the so-called “boyfriend loophole” preventing individuals convicted of domestic abuse from purchasing a gun.
The law included $750 million to help states implement “red flag” laws to remove firearms from people deemed to be a danger to themselves or others, as well as other violence prevention programs. It also provided funding for a variety of programs aimed at shoring up the nation’s mental health apparatus and securing schools.
Willinger told ABC News that “short of asking Congress to appeal it,” there is little the Trump administration can do about the law.
“It’s possible that the administration could do stuff to hold up that money,” Willinger said. “I don’t know what wiggle room they have to do that.”
(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump will meet with Senate Republicans Wednesday to try to get lawmakers “on the same page” on how to advance some of his major policy initiatives after he takes office on Jan. 20.
Trump will meet with Senate leadership and the rank and file after paying his respects to former President Jimmy Carter, who lies in state in the Capitol before his funeral on Thursday.
The president-elect wants to deliver on campaign promises, but how to move them forward has divided congressional Republicans.
Trump has pitched one massive bill that would include several of Trump’s top priorities: Immigration reform and energy production, and extending the tax cuts passed during his first term and other spending cuts. He’s also suggested that the bill should raise the debt ceiling or eliminate it altogether.
With small majorities in each chamber and little to no support expected from Democrats, Republicans plan to push “reconciliation” — a fast-track process limited to spending and revenue legislation that needs only a majority rather than the 60-vote threshold in the Senate needed to pass legislation.
House Speaker Mike Johnson faces resistance to the one-bill approach from fiscal conservatives in his conference. And some Senate Republicans are advocating for two bills — one on border issues and a second to deal with fiscal policy.
One of the key objectives in Wednesday’s meeting will be “how we get on the same page with the House,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso said Tuesday.
Barrasso said the “goal is the same,” whether it’s done with one or two bills, but he said a two-part plan would allow Trump to deliver on some of his promises and allow more time to address tax policy that doesn’t expire until the end of the year.
“It was a suggestion by [Senate Majority Leader] John Thune — this was before Christmas — he said, ‘Let’s get an early win on the border,'” Barrasso, R-Wyo., said. “It was an issue in the election and it is a big issue for the American people and it is a big issue for national security, and we just thought we could get that done in a quicker fashion with a focus on that, on taking the handcuffs off of American energy as well as military strength, and then have the longer time to work on the financial component of this.
“These issues and the urgency of the tax issue doesn’t really come into play until the end of the year to the level that these other issues have the higher urgency right now,” he said.
Trump reiterated his preference for one bill when he spoke to reporters on Tuesday, but said he could live with two.
“Well, I like one big, beautiful bill, and I always have, I always will, he said. But if two is more certain [to pass], it does go a little bit quicker because you can do the immigration stuff early,” he said.
In the House, Johnson said he remains convinced that the one-bill strategy is the “best way to go,” but conversations with Thune are continuing.
“Yes, Leader Thune and I are on exactly the same page with regard to the objectives, and we’re determining right now the final sequence of the play call, so to speak,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “This is not some sort of, I feel like sometimes the media tries to make this an existential threat to the objectives or to what we’re doing with the legislation. It’s not that, this is two chambers deciding the best sequence of events, and we’ll get to a perfect alignment here in the next I think a couple of days.”
Johnson said he hopes to have a bill ready by the first week in April, but it remains to be seen if he can get fiscal conservatives in his conference, who have long opposed all-in-one bills like the one Johnson is proposing, on board.
The speaker pushed back on Tuesday about the one-bill approach being a kitchen sink approach.
“This is not an omnibus spending bill, but appropriation,” Johnson said. “This is reducing spending, which is an objective we talked about. I’ll keep reiterating this: that just because the debt limit is raised, to give stability the bond markets and to send a message around the world that we will pay the nation’s debt. We are doggedly determined to decrease the size of scope of government and to limit spending, cut spending so you can you’ll see both of those things happen simultaneously.”
Johnson also intends to handle the debt limit in the reconciliation bill — without Democratic support.
“That way, as the Republican Party, the party in charge of both chambers, we again get to determine the details of that. If it runs through the regular order, regular process… then you have to have both parties negotiating. And we feel like we are in better stead to do it ourselves,” he said Tuesday.
But it remains to be seen whether Johnson can sell the fiscal conservatives in his conference on that idea. They nearly derailed the short-term government funding bill to avert a shutdown last month after Trump demanded that it dealt with the debt ceiling.
After his meeting with senators, Trump will meet with groups of House Republicans at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida this weekend.
“He’s bringing in big groups of House Republicans to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend three days in a row to meet with and talk with all of our team members about what’s ahead of us and the challenges and how we can accomplish all this together,” Johnson said, though the speaker is not expected to attend.
(WASHINGTON) — Current and former U.S. Agency for International Development officials, speaking anonymously due to fear of retribution, blasted the Trump administration’s gutting of the aid agency, saying it has left critical partners in the lurch and much of its staff in limbo overseas.
In addition to the humanitarian work that has halted, scores of career USAID workers living abroad are also seeing their lives turned upside down. Several officials were very emotional describing their current situations and uncertainty.
All USAID humanitarian work around the world has effectively stopped, these current and former officials said, despite the State Department saying there are waivers for lifesaving programs.
“Right now, there is no USAID humanitarian assistance happening,” a current USAID official in the humanitarian division said. “There are waivers put in place by Secretary Rubio for emergency food assistance and a number of other sectors, but they are a fraud and a sham and intended to give the illusion of continuity, which is untrue.
The official also slammed the waiver as unclear and largely unactionable because staff has been furloughed, as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency seized control of the agency.
“There is no staff left anymore to actually process waiver requests or to move money or to make awards or to do anything,” that official added. “We’ve ceased to exist.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday pushed back on nongovernmental organizations saying aid programs remained paused despite the waiver.
“I issued a blanket waiver that said if this is lifesaving programs, OK — if it’s providing food or medicine or anything that is saving lives and is immediate and urgent, you’re not included in the freeze,” he said. “I don’t know how much more clear we can be than that.
“And I would say if some organization is receiving funds from the United States and does not know how to apply a waiver, then I have real questions about the competence of that organization, or I wonder whether they’re deliberately sabotaging it for purposes of making a political point,” Rubio added.
But the above USAID official pushed back, saying those sectors are “actually unable to access their lines of credit here in Washington, D.C., for money already obligated to, already contractually put forward by the U.S. government.”
“And this is meaning [a] lack of provision of assistance,” the official continued. “This is meaning staff layoffs, meaning absolute confusion and mayhem. Some may have some money to keep going for a little bit, but not for long.”
Another former official who spoke with numerous USAID humanitarian partner organizations said, “Not one has received any funding since the stop-work order to continue work, even if theoretically that work is allowed to continue.”
One current USAID official based in Asia is pregnant.
She broke down in tears on the call, explaining how she doesn’t know what is going to happen to her family, worried that the administration is going to “abandon” her overseas or back in the U.S.
“I am among more than a dozen American families that are either on or planning obstetric medevac to deliver our babies. We have a nursery painted with a crib ready for our baby that has taken us three years of fertility treatments to conceive,” the official based in Asia said, her voice cracking with emotion. “Instead of nesting and planning for their arrival, we are unsure if Secretary Rubio and President Trump are going to abandon us overseas or abandon us when we land on American soil. We have been told there is no money to assist USAID families that are awaiting the arrival of our infants with resettlement in the U.S.”
“We have been using refugee resources from our churches and community groups that we usually use to help refugees from places like Syria and Afghanistan,” the official added. “We are using these resources to figure out how to land as close to on our feet as possible. Unless the tide of public opinion shifts, each of these families are going to arrive homeless, jobless and insurance-less within a matter of days, or possibly even hours, of stepping foot on American soil.”
The spouse of a current official in the Latin America region said their family does not have a home to return to in the U.S.
“My spouse has served in a war zone. We have school-aged children with typical challenges you would face in the U.S., but with not the resources you would have in the U.S., that we’ve had to manage, and we’ve been willing to move wherever is best for the agency,” this official explained.
“We worked across administrations with programs changing, growing, shrinking, and it’s a circumstance right now where we literally have focused our life on this USAID mission, and we do not have a home to go back to, which is quite typical of Foreign Service families, and we don’t know how we’re supposed to pick up and just leave,” the official added.
“How do you leave when you have not just family, not just school-age kids — you have pets, you have things, you don’t have a home to go back to, and you have a mission that you believe in and that you’ve supported for decades?” the official said. “And it’s just the rug pulled under you.”
Rubio said this week it is “not our intention” to uproot USAID families abroad despite the agency issuing a 30-day mandate for their return.
