President Trump on Wednesday July 15 called Gov. Kathy Hochul's (D) new data center freeze a "terrible decision" and said New York should reverse the policy immediately, per CNBC. The clash comes one day after Hochul signed the executive order, covered in AIPD's July 14th edition. Trump warned the moratorium will cost the state money and jobs and cede ground to Chinese AI competition. Hochul's order blocks new environmental permits for data centers above 50 megawatts for up to a year to let state regulators write standards on water use, air quality and rate impact.
Read at CNBC ↗ • Read at Governor Kathy Hochul ↗
Anthropic is running a state-by-state strategy to advance AI safety legislation, per Politico: state and local government lead Cesar Fernandez has endorsed Illinois' AI Safety Measures Act and is lobbying legislatures in California, New York and other states, contrasting with OpenAI's push for a federal framework or preemption. The company's political spending is scaling up alongside the lobbying — CEO Dario Amodei gave $1 million in May to Public First, a super PAC backing candidates who support mandatory AI safeguards, in what appears to be his first seven-figure political donation, according to FEC filings released Wednesday. The filings also suggest a funding gap ahead: Leading the Future, a rival super PAC network backed by OpenAI President Greg Brockman and Andreessen Horowitz, ended June with $31 million on hand, against $1.8 million combined across Public First Action's three super PACs.
Read at Politico ↗ • Read at Politico ↗
OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane on Wednesday July 15 posted a corporate blog outlining a "reverse federalism" approach in which state AI laws help build a common national standard rather than being preempted. The post endorses California, New York and Illinois frontier safety bills as directionally aligned on three elements: documented safety frameworks with public risk assessment disclosure, incident reporting and independent audits. It welcomes the Obernolte-Trahan federal discussion draft and calls for legislation to strengthen the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) as the federal testing home. OpenAI said it appreciates the Trump administration's goal of having a federal cyber evaluation framework in place by "early August."
Read at OpenAI ↗
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said at The Hill's Hill Nation Summit that he remains "freaked out" by the pace of AI development and cannot name a single AI guardrail law passed this term by House Republican leadership, per The Hill. Lieu praised Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) and Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) for their draft national AI framework introduced last month. He warned against the draft's proposed three year override of state AI model development laws, calling a preemption ceiling rather than a floor "a little dangerous" given how quickly the technology is moving. His remarks feed the House Democratic Caucus' Jeffries-convened commission effort to develop a consensus AI framework.
Read at The Hill ↗
Mounting public opposition to AI has produced a wave of violent rhetoric and threats against industry leaders, the Wall Street Journal reported. Digital threats targeting AI chiefs and data centers grew sevenfold between late February and May before easing in June, per security firm Liferaft, and recent incidents include an April attempt to firebomb OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's home and a man who slipped into Anthropic's lobby warning that an executive was "going to be killed." Executive-protection spending has climbed across the sector — Oracle's rose 85.5% to $5.6 million in 2025 and Palantir's 150% to nearly $3 million — as public sentiment sours: 55% of Americans in a March Quinnipiac poll said AI is doing more harm than good.
Read at WSJ ↗
Run for Something, the progressive candidate recruitment organization, launched a tool in June called CampSight that lets candidates see how AI chatbots describe them and nudge those responses in their favor, Politico reported. The tool simulates voter personas — such as a homeowner or union member — to score how favorably models respond to policy questions, tracks the citations chatbots rely on (most commonly Ballotpedia and campaign websites) and recommends fixes like submitting a Ballotpedia profile or rewording an issues page. About two dozen campaigns are using CampSight, with roughly 350 candidates and advocacy organizations on the waitlist, as voters increasingly consult chatbots to make ballot decisions — a Cornell study found candidate-favoring chatbot conversations were about four times more effective at swaying voters than TV ads.
Read at Politico ↗