5
#000000
#FFFFFF
technology
Does Swarm of Lobbyists at Governors Summit Help Explain Democrats' Silence on Trump AI Order?
"Regulating AI is winning issue for Democrats, but their own party leaders are too complicit with Silicon Valley to use it," said one observer.
Dec 12, 2025
Polls show that a majority of US voters—and especially Democrats—want more robust guardrails on artificial intelligence, but Democratic governors' silence on President Donald Trump's directive banning states from regulating AI has some observers asking if lobbying by the powerful industry is to blame.
Sludge's David Moore and Donald Shaw reported Friday that tech titans including OpenAI and Meta last week sent a small army of lobbyists to meet with attendees of the Democratic Governors Association’s annual meeting, held this year at the swanky Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix.
According to the report, lobbyists and governors—some of whom "are teasing White House bids in 2028 or rumored to be in the mix"—gathered for a closed-door meeting. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore were among those who reportedly met with the lobbyists.
Trump signed an executive order trying to prevent states from regulating AI and following through on the safety laws they enacted, but there was little public pushback from Democratic governors.AI lobbyists descended on the DGA winter meeting last weekend in Phoenix, per a list we obtained:
[image or embed]
— David Moore (@davidrussellmoore.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 11:15 AM
The meeting preceded Trump's Thursday signing of an executive order aimed at limiting states' ability to regulate rapidly evolving AI technology. The order directs the US Department of Justice to establish an AI Litigation Task Force empowered to sue states that enact “onerous and excessive" AI regulation. The edict also threatens to withhold federal funding from states that implement AI regulations that the Trump administration finds objectionable.
Democratic governors have been relatively muted on the order, especially given the overwhelming support for regulation of AI—which many experts say poses threats to humanity that may equal or outweigh its benefits—across the political spectrum.
As Moore and Shaw wrote:
While Democratic governors were silent, their Republican counterparts have been loudly arguing for months against the federal government preempting state AI policies. In June, 17 Republican governors sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune [R-SD] and House Speaker Mike Johnson [R-La.] warning them against preempting their states’ protections on AI use. Over the past couple months, a trio of Republican governors—Spencer Cox (Utah), Ron DeSantis (Fla.), and Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Ark.)—continued to make known their opposition to the Trump administration’s executive order.
Newsom, who many observers believe is eyeing a 2028 White House run, especially disappointed proponents of AI safeguards last year when he vetoed what would have been the nation's strongest AI safety regulations.
It's not just Democratic governors—congressional Democrats have increasingly partnered with an industry expected to soon be worth trillions of dollars. Some Democrats, like Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, are personally invested in AI stocks. The AI industry also made record contributions to political campaigns during the 2024 cycle.
Other Democrats, including some who may have their sights set on higher office—notably Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York—advocate stronger guardrails on AI development.
The public is worried about AI. Regulating AI is winning issue for Democrats but their own party leaders are too complicit with Silicon Valley to use it. www.thenation.com/article/poli...
[image or embed]
— Jeet Heer (@jeetheer.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 7:24 AM
"Voters want the party to get tough on the industry. But Democratic leaders are following the money instead," Jeet Heer, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, wrote Friday.
Citing voters' desire for stronger regulation, Heer argued that "Democrats have a tremendous opportunity to use the AI backlash for wedge politics," adding that "it's a way to win back working-class voters who are already disillusioned with the GOP and Trump."
Keep Reading
Show Less
Hegseth Says Pentagon Project Will Put Artificial Intelligence 'Into the Hands of Every American Warrior'
The new website, GenAI.mil, describes the "end state" of the project as "a Joint Force where generative AI is fully integrated as a native capability into every aspect of operations."
Dec 09, 2025
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, currently under fire for treating a deadly ongoing US military operation against alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean "like it's a video game," as one columnist said this week, announced on Tuesday that the Pentagon is launching an artificial intelligence platform for service members to use on the proverbial battlefield.
"We are unleashing GenAI.mil," said Hegseth in a video address on the Department of Defense's (DOD) embrace of AI. "This platform puts the world's most powerful frontier AI models, starting with Google Gemini, directly into the hands of every American warrior."
Hegseth, who has claimed the DOD is now called the Department of War, said that "at the click of a button," service members can "conduct deep research, format documents, and even analyze video or imagery at unprecedented speed."
"We will continue to aggressively field the world's best technology to make our fighting force more lethal than ever before," added Hegseth.
Pete Hegseth: "The future of American warfare is here, and it's spelled AI."
He says the military has launched a new platform that "puts the world's most powerful frontier AI models, starting with Google Gemini, directly into the hands of every American warrior." pic.twitter.com/phva2cnIc9
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) December 9, 2025
Jessica Burbank and Drop Site News reported that the custom-made Google AI tool, Gemini, is now available to all military personnel, civilians, and contractors, and includes extensions to tools including ChatGPT, AI assistant Claude, and Grok.
The Trump administration awarded Google a $200 million contract in July to develop AI at the DOD.
"Victory belongs to those who embrace real innovation," Hegseth wrote in a memo obtained by Burbank. "GenAI.mil is part of this monumental transformation... I expect every member of the department to log in, learn it, and incorporate it into your workflows immediately. AI should be in your battle rhythm every single day."
DOD employees have been given a "Do and Don't" list, according to Burbank.
A Pentagon source told Burbank that an “example of 'don’t' was, 'Don’t use GenAI for decisions involving attribution, targeting, or threat evaluation without human validation.'"
"I read that as someone can read what the AI said and be like, 'Yep it’s good to go shoot that missile,'" added the source. “They are legit going full force into AI."
GenAI.mil also describes the "end state" that the Pentagon is working toward as "a Joint Force where generative AI is fully integrated as a native capability into every aspect of operations."
"Our warriors and leaders will leverage AI to achieve unparalleled situational awareness, accelerate planning cycles, and execute operations with a speed and precision that yields information dominance and mission success," reads the platform.
The launch of Google Gemini comes after Emil Michael, the defense undersecretary for research and engineering, took control of the Defense Innovation Unit, the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO), and other offices in an effort to accelerate the expansion of AI use in the military.
Between Russia and Ukraine, Michael said, "You have a robot-on-robot frontline now, which we've never seen before."
“The explosion of capabilities has been enormous, and we're just catching up to that,” he added. “Now we can take CDAO and actually try to use it to push the capability into the department for actual use cases.”
Drop Site co-founder Ryan Grim commented that Tuesday's announcement points to "Hegseth ushering in the apocalypse."
The launch of GenAI.mil comes as the Trump administration continues to escalate tensions with Venezuela, with President Donald Trump signaling that the US could soon launch land strikes in the South American country and elsewhere in Latin America.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Majority of Democrats, Independents Want Leaders to Fight GOP Attacks on AI Rules
"Voters are angry about Big Tech’s rogue AI telling teens to commit suicide and they want to see their congressional leaders fighting back," said one campaigner.
Dec 05, 2025
A poll published Friday revealed that a majority of Democratic and Independent US voters want congressional Democrats to fight GOP efforts to block states from passing laws regulating artificial intelligence—even as the technology evolves at a speed that has many experts concerned about serious and possibly existential consequences.
The Demand Progress poll of 2,257 likely voters conducted by Tavern Research found that voters across the political spectrum are wary of Big Tech's ability or willingness to ensure safe development of AI, with just 8% of Democratic respondents, 9% of Independents, and 18% of Republicans saying they trust companies to "adequately prioritize safety."
Respondents across the board—81% of Democrats and Independents and 74% of Republicans—also agreed that "large technology companies have too much influence over AI policy."
Although an earlier Republican attempt to slip a 10-year ban on state AI regulation into the massive One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Donald Trump in July was shot down in the Senate, a bill introduced in September by Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R-Wash.) would impose a temporary moratorium on state laws regulating artificial intelligence.
So far, Trump's most notably robust regulation of artificial intelligence has been his executive order aimed at preventing "woke AI." His other AI-related edicts have rolled back regulations, including some meager steps taken under former President Joe Biden to bolster safety.
Last month, Trump signed a directive launching the Genesis Mission, "a new national effort to use artificial intelligence to transform how scientific research is conducted and accelerate the speed of scientific discovery"—even as critics warned that the administration's lax approach to regulation poses safety and structural risks.
As experts urge a more measured approach or even a pause to AI development, 56% of Democratic and 62% of Independent respondents to the new poll want Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) to work to block Republicans’ policy to prevent states from regulating AI.
Additionally, 61% of Democratic voters and 68% of Independents said they would be less likely to support a Democratic member of Congress who backed a bill to prevent states from regulating AI. Just 15% of Democrats and 14% of Independents said that they would be more likely to support lawmakers who approve such legislation.
On Monday, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries avoided taking a stance on the issue, saying that it “hasn't been brought to the leadership level yet.”This isn't enough. Our poll found that voters want to see their congressional leaders fighting back against AI deregulation.
[image or embed]
— Demand Progress (@demandprogress.bsky.social) December 5, 2025 at 6:53 AM
On Monday, Jeffries avoided taking a stance on the Republican effort to ban AI guardrails, arguing that it hasn't yet reached the leadership level. Critics urged him to speak out against the legislation.
“Democratic and Independent voters overwhelmingly want to see Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer fighting Donald Trump and Big Tech’s attempt to ban states from enacting AI safeguards, not back down and compromise,” Demand Progress policy director Emily Peterson-Cassin said in a statement Friday.
“It’s not enough for Leader Jeffries to say that the issue hasn’t been brought to him yet," she added. "Voters are angry about Big Tech’s rogue AI telling teens to commit suicide and they want to see their congressional leaders fighting back.”
Opponents of a more cautious approach to AI development argue that the United States cannot afford to fall behind competitors including China in the rush to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI), a hypothetical advanced AI that can understand, learn, and apply knowledge of any subject as well as or better than a typical human.
The race to AGI and development of AI systems in general is fraught with perils ranging from cybercrime, consumer manipulation, erosion of democracy, and worsening inequality to what many experts warn is the distant but possible threat of uncontrollable AI wiping out humanity.
With so much uncertainty—and even danger—accompanying the unprecedented promise of AI, an increasingly aware public favors caution. Majorities of respondents to poll after poll say they want more, not less, AI regulation.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Most Popular