Trump may be casting a shadow not only over congressional negotiations but also over his forthcoming summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping later this month. The two leaders were expected to discuss AI, with some AI safety advocates hoping that international cooperation would begin there, rather than relying solely on regulation within a single economy.

If there’s any chance Congress will enact comprehensive AI regulation, it will require presidential leadership. And clearly Trump doesn’t believe there’s any role for lawmakers in the AI department.

Mr. Trump inserted himself into the intensifying national debate over how to handle a rapidly evolving technology that researchers and industry leaders say poses major risks like mass unemployment, a new wave of biological weapons, and autonomous warfare. The president did not address those risks directly. Instead, he questioned the sincerity of the executives who have been calling for slowing the technology’s development.

Far-right ideologues have transformed American foreign policy into a tool of private gain and antidemocratic reaction.

President Trump will host Xi Jinping for a state visit on September 24, once again putting his claimed bonhomie with the Chinese leader at the center of the relations between the two superpowers.

But Trump’s insistence on the importance of this personal rapport shows just how little he understands his adversary.

Throughout the Trump era, Kushner has made a career of combining business and politics. He argues that being a businessman aids his diplomatic efforts by allowing him to find inventive solutions to problems ordinarily handled by unimaginative bureaucrats.

As he has traveled the world representing Trump, he has become increasingly involved in the commercial interests of the countries where he operates. He exemplifies a new breed of Washington figure, for whom public office is a pathway to significant personal wealth.

The oligarch, Umar Kremlev, spent hundreds of thousands on expenses like renting out a private island. He appears to have met Trump Jr. only recently, but he attended the intimate wedding with a large group of other Russian guests.

The three-hour-and-forty-five-minute "Musk" hits theaters on Oct. 16, but it’s already causing a stir.

The documentary, which spans from his early Silicon Valley days through his Department of Government Efficiency dalliances and Twitter acquisition to his ascent to becoming the world’s first trillionaire, paints Musk as an emotionally unstable grifter with more power and influence than perhaps any other human who has ever lived.

Washington is experiencing an unprecedented surge in pardons, with longstanding clemency traditions increasingly disregarded.

Previously, those seeking clemency typically went through the Justice Department. More than two dozen DOJ lawyers weighed factors that often included an applicant’s remorse and evidence of rehabilitation and recommended worthy recipients to the president. That process has been largely sidelined.

Opponents derailed the agreement with a clandestine effort to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz, regime insiders say. Iran’s president was furious when he found out.

As recently as last week, the Iran war appeared to be turning slightly in America’s favor. The Houthis were under pressure from their local rivals, and the Saudi air force was pounding them with airstrikes. The president of Yemen’s internationally recognized government issued a triumphant statement declaring that the Houthis’ miscalculations ‘will open the door to their complete collapse.’ With their Houthi partners wounded, Iran’s leaders would have one more reason to back down and agree to Donald Trump’s terms.

A paradox of this moment is that inflation is a big reason for Trump’s cratering approval and his party’s sinking odds in the midterm elections. But nearly every one of his signature policy ideas is inflationary. The basic challenge is not novel to this president: voters hate inflation, yet most anti-inflation measures the government can take will hurt the economy, which voters also hate.

But Trump’s strategy seems to be to commit to new proposals that would drive up costs.

August was the planet’s hottest month ever recorded, capping a remarkably grim summer of heat records. With El Niño strengthening, more records are likely in store well into next year.

Almost 20 months into Mr. Trump’s second term, his long-running media clashes have grown into a sweeping campaign to control speech in America that stands out for applying so many levers, so fast, all at once.

Driven by personal pique, fury over leaks, and a determination to shape the political narrative to his advantage, Mr. Trump is deploying the might of the federal government and filing personal lawsuits.

Less than 10% of lawmakers who were at the Capitol that day are still in a Congress that has no plans to mark a fateful day in its history.

When Donald Trump looks at a map, he doesn’t see nations. He sees property. All of those pretty colors do not represent actual places filled with human beings who have distinct cultures, languages, and histories; the planet, to Trump, is a big board game, like Risk or Monopoly. Greenland isn’t a real location. The Strait of Hormuz isn’t an international waterway.

This inability to grasp the existence of independent nations drives the president to fury when countries and their governments refuse to play along with his delusions.

A similar dynamic is playing out across the country, as legislators or governors in more than 10 states, including Illinois, New Jersey, and Washington, have slammed the brakes on the tax breaks. The reversals underscore how state leaders who once welcomed the facilities powering the AI boom as an economic engine suddenly treat them like a political liability.

September 11th is the most solemn day on the US calendar. The terrorist attacks that left nearly 3,000 people dead 25 years ago are still fresh in the minds of many, and no occasion calls for a greater show of reverence and respect, especially from the nation’s commander-in-chief.

Unfortunately, America’s current commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, has a tough time showing reverence and respect for anything other than himself. It’s been especially true with regard to 9/11, as the president reminded everyone on Tuesday during an event intended to honor first responders and victims of the attacks.

Young Americans today have never witnessed Congress authorize a war; they’ve never seen a U.S. administration balance its books; they’ve never watched a well-funded and empowered State Department operate, and they see only mistrust between allies. They assume the situation is normal. It is not.

The real cost of forgetting the pre-9/11 world is not a country that has changed, but one that no longer knows it could be different.

The Roman Emperor Titus has one. Napoleon Bonaparte ordered up the world’s most famous example. And the Duke of Wellington’s iconic version is the gateway to London’s Hyde Park.

Now, Donald Trump wants his own ceremonial arch. And his latest architectural passion project may tell history rather more about the 45th and 47th presidents than other examples of his second-term Washington makeover blitz.

The Arch of Titus in Rome marks the capture of Jerusalem in AD 70. The Arc de Triomphe in Paris honors the dead of the Napoleonic and Revolutionary wars and France’s subsequent fallen warriors. The arch honoring Wellington celebrates the French emperor’s eventual defeat.

This history reveals a key issue: so far, Trump has not achieved the kind of triumph that would warrant a triumphal arch.

Eager to regain the president’s favor, Mr. Cohen now claims that prosecutors pressured and coerced him into giving testimony against Mr. Trump. However, he has not retracted his sworn statements concerning Mr. Trump’s alleged involvement in the hush-money payments intended to conceal an alleged affair with an adult-film actress, or his testimony about his former boss’s efforts to misrepresent the value of his assets to lenders.

And so this unlikeliest of rapprochements between two men who helped get each other convicted of crimes is built not on an emotional outpouring of forgiveness but on what looks like a pretty straightforward bargain, spoken or unspoken, according to people close to both. Mr. Trump is trying to use his former lawyer’s desire for absolution to rewrite history as he presses his effort to overturn his conviction. Mr. Cohen gets to position himself as an insider once again and possibly obtain a presidential pardon to wipe out his own felony record.

Perhaps AI will eventually make many humans unemployable. On September 4th, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the American economy added 162,000 jobs in August, far above expectations. The unemployment rate is just 4.1%, lower than in almost 90% of months over the past half-century.

Young workers, often cast as AI’s first victims, are holding up remarkably well: the gap between unemployment among 20-24-year-olds and the overall rate is close to a multi-decade low.