OUR PICKSVetting Powerful AI Models for Risks | Influencers Paid to Frame Chinese AI as a Threat | Trump Panel Recommends FEMA Respond to Fewer Disasters, and more
· Trump’s Gyrations on the War Leave Even Rubio Out of Sync
· White House Wants to Vet Powerful AI Models for Risks − a Computer Scientist Explains Why AI Safety Is So Difficult
· U.S. Violent Crime Is at Its Lowest in More Than a Century – but the Funding That Helped Reduce It Is Disappearing
· A Dark-Money Campaign Is Paying Influencers to Frame Chinese AI as a Threat
· Trump Panel Recommends FEMA Respond to Fewer Disasters
· Trump’s Counterterrorism Strategy Makes Targeting Drug Cartels the Top priority
Trump’s Gyrations on the War Leave Even Rubio Out of Sync (Erica L. Green, New York Times)
The administration’s latest shifts on the status of the conflict show how treacherous it is to speak for a president who cultivates an erratic style.
White House Wants to Vet Powerful AI Models for Risks − a Computer Scientist Explains Why AI Safety Is So Difficult (Ahmed Hamza, The Conversation)
The Trump administration is looking to develop a process that would have the federal government review the safety of powerful artificial intelligence models before approving their release, according to a report in The New York Times on May 4, 2026. The move would stand in contrast to the administration’s generally anti-regulatory approach to industry and comes in the wake of Anthropic voluntarily postponing the release of its latest AI model, Mythos.
U.S. Violent Crime Is at Its Lowest in More Than a Century – but the Funding That Helped Reduce It Is Disappearing (Andrea Hagan, The Conversation)
The United States is experiencing one of the steepest declines in violent crime in modern history, including a murder rate at its lowest point in more than a century.
Homicides across 35 major American cities fell 21% in 2025, amounting to 922 fewer people killed. Robberies dropped 23%. Gun assaults declined 22%. Carjackings plummeted 43%.
Yet the Trump administration has yanked hundreds of millions of dollars from the programs that helped make those numbers possible.
A Dark-Money Campaign Is Paying Influencers to Frame Chinese AI as a Threat (Taylor Lorenz, Wired)
Build American AI, a nonprofit linked to a super PAC bankrolled by executives at OpenAI and Andreessen Horowitz, is funding a campaign to spread pro-AI messaging and stoke fears about China.
Trump Panel Recommends FEMA Respond to Fewer Disasters (Scott Dance, New York Times)
A White House task force also called for speeding up aid, but some of its ideas would require action by Congress to become reality.
Trump’s Counterterrorism Strategy Makes Targeting Drug Cartels the Top priority (AP / NPR)
President Donald Trump has signed off on a new U.S. counterterrorism strategy that sets eliminating drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere as the administration’s highest priority, the White House announced Wednesday.
