Washington, DC

1. Capitol stirs over AI threats
2. Trump floats payouts
3. GOP data center fight
4. WH childcare pushback
5. Giffords’ battleground plan
6. Inflation data released

PDB: Fetterman’s Trump play

Trump, Vance at midterm convention in Texas … US releases weekly jobless claims … ECB expected to raise rates

Bipartisan AI safety bill gains momentum

Congress isn’t back to Washington yet, but some lawmakers were jolted awake by a round of dire AI warnings from a resigning Anthropic researcher who said “people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.” Sources who spoke to Semafor said an in-the-works AI safety bill from Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Majority Leader John Thune is the only viable option to stand a chance before 2027 — and that it may be introduced as early as next week. Klobuchar told Semafor in a statement that she is working on a bipartisan agreement on “legislation for commonsense guardrails to address the risks posed by AI systems … it’s clear we need to act now and not wait.” AI frontier labs and public advocacy groups are already giving Hill staffers feedback on the draft text, which hasn’t been publicly released.

— Ashley Gold

Trump baffles GOP with $5,000 check plan

President Donald Trump surprised Republicans at their midterm convention with a new campaign pledge: a $5,000 “dividend to every adult citizen” if the party holds on to its House and Senate majorities. Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, quickly promised to “get a bill ready” for Nov. 3, while Vice President JD Vance told skeptical Fox News interviewers that Trump wanted Americans to “share in some of the benefit” deriving from tariff revenue — though not nearly enough has been collected from the levies to fund 270 million checks. Trump made a similar move in 2018, floating a “middle class tax cut” if Republicans won the midterms — but the effort came to nothing.

— David Weigel

RNC member breaks rank on data centers

An anti-data center bus tour traversing key midterm states will add another complication for Republican candidates in tight races who are trying to navigate Trump’s support of the AI infrastructure amid growing voter opposition — and it’s being spearheaded by a Georgia RNC member. The “AI Data Center Revolt” bus tour is organized by Humans First, a group focused on the risks of AI; its chair is Amy Kremer, a pro-Trump political activist who is listed as a Georgia RNC committeewoman. The bus tour is slated to stop in Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Georgia, and North Carolina — states seen as crucial for Republicans to maintain Senate control that are also home to live data center debates. “I will put my pro-Trump credentials up against the tech bros any day of the week,” Kremer told Semafor. “Decisions about the construction of data centers are local ones not made by the White House or Congress — and that’s exactly how it should be.”

— Shelby Talcott

WH shrugs off GOP clashes over childcare

The White House is shrugging off the internal Republican tension kicked up by its still-unreleased proposal to divert federal childcare aid to stay-at-home parents, report Semafor’s Shelby Talcott and Eleanor Mueller. The plan, which would route some money from the government’s $12 billion childcare fund to help married parents who don’t work, reflects the rising power of a GOP wing that’s occasionally willing to abandon party orthodoxy on the size of government to appeal to the working-class base that helped elect Trump. The policy’s right-wing critics argue that Trump should focus on cutting government subsidies, but some close to the White House seem to view the plan’s opponents as irrelevant establishment voices. “The so-called ‘pushback’ is coming from the same paid-for critics who opposed the president in 2016 and again in 2024,” Trump adviser Alex Bruesewitz told Semafor.

Giffords gun group’s $10M campaign

Former Rep. Gabby Giffords’ eponymous gun safety group is jumping into the midterms with a $10 million campaign initially focusing on three crucial House and Senate races, according to details first shared with Semafor’s Burgess Everett. Giffords is putting $1 million into a buy against former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers in Michigan’s Senate race, $850,000 against Virginia Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans, and $350,000 against Republican Rep. Tom Kean of New Jersey, with plans to go into four more House races as it seeks to erode the GOP’s advantage on public safety in key battleground states. Giffords executive director Emma Brown said in an interview that Democrats “still face a persistent problem in our brand on public safety and crime” but research shows they can make that ground up by hitting Republicans for corruption and closeness to gun groups.

Inflation gauge expected to rise

The US will get a snapshot of the upward pressure on prices caused by Trump’s trade war with Canada and the ongoing conflict with Iran today. The release of the Producer Price Index, which measures inflation at the domestic wholesale level, will help inform the Federal Reserve’s decision on rates next week. The August measure of PPI is expected to “rise significantly,” according to Bloomberg. It’s one of two inflation reports this week, with the Consumer Price Index coming out tomorrow. The rising costs of gas and other goods are complicating Republicans’ path in the midterms, leaving American consumers in a funk even as the job market remains solid and AI spending soars. Making matters worse, the Treasury Department’s plan for buying back longer-term bonds disappointed the bond market yesterday; rising Treasury yields are driving up borrowing costs across the board.

Candidates contend with ‘resurfaced’ clips

Candidates who think they’ve escaped their pasts keep having to explain comments that “resurface” online, again and again. Video of Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico rejecting “tough on crime” policies in 2020 recently “resurfaced,” according to Fox News. Peter Oberacker, a New York state senator running for Congress, watched his party cancel ad reservations after Politico published a “resurfaced 2015 Veterans Day Facebook post” honoring a grandfather who fought on the wrong side of World War II. “Resurfacing” is more than a shortcut for political reporters to explain why they’re serving up something old to their audience. It reflects the way so much of our modern discourse is made — by journalists and operatives skimming the waters of social media, noodling out content that long ago stopped getting delivered in a linear form.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby believes America needs “a flag carrier.” Now he is betting regulators will let him create one. On this week’s episode of The CEO Signal, presented by PwC, Kirby argues that airlines are not commodities and that greater scale could benefit customers — even as he acknowledges a fundamental obstacle to consolidation: “We can’t get it done without a willing partner, and we don’t have one.”

As a former card counter, Kirby applies poker logic to business, embracing calculated risks. He tells Penny and Andrew why United gambled on expanding its fleet during Covid, why CEOs “don’t have to be totally right,” and why their job is not to work hard, but “to think hard.”

White House

• President Trump told reporters the Iran war would end “immediately” after November’s midterm elections.
• Trump said he would consider pardoning Michael Cohen, his former attorney.
• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reassigned his chief information officer away from AI policy after he relayed private misgivings over White House policy to AI companies. — Politico

Congress

• House Democrats are considering creating a select committee on AI if they retake control of the House in November. — Politico

Outside the Beltway

• The Justice Department said the University of California Berkeley School of Law discriminated against applicants based on race.

Campaigns

• Democratic Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee lost his primary to a challenger, a former CVS executive.
• Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., appeared at the Dallas Republican convention in a video praising Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa., and pledging to work with President Trump.
• Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he has “no plans at this time” to run for president, but noted “I don’t know what the future holds.”

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