As House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump dismissed the idea—backed by the vast majority of Americans—that lawmakers should impose strict regulations on the artificial intelligence industry as insiders call for a slowdown of development, former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan on Sunday issued a reminder that the…
Page F7From§Eachthe early evening edition — 13 September 2026
Congress warns AI is dangerous all week, agrees on no fix; Trump's agencies build it data centers anyway.
As it ran on the front
On September 10, Sen. Bernie Sanders booked a bipartisan hearing for the 16th on what he called the "extraordinary dangers" of AI. That's a calendar entry. It has a date, a room, presumably a sign-in sheet.
The next day, September 11, the Interior Department was already several steps past the hearing. Secretary Doug Burgum had the Bureau of Land Management compiling lists of public land "ripe for data center development" and forwarding them up the chain. No hearing required for that one. That docket doesn't wait on Congress; it was moving before Congress had agreed to discuss the thing it's for.…
…(cont) Ten days before that, on August 31, the posture toward the technology was already set in a social media post: towns that reject data centers will end up "backwards and poor." That's not a warning about AI. That's a sales pitch for the sites Interior was about to start listing.
Then came Sunday, September 13 — a full day's output of alarm. Obama, at a private fundraiser, told Democrats AI oversight needs to move to the center of the agenda, warned it could be "dangerous." Jeffries said Congress should "act urgently." Gallego compared the industry to Dr. Frankenstein announcing the monster is loose. Utah's Cox said government has to "protect the public." Rep. Flood said get on top of it. Rep. Stanton asked the Speaker to keep the House in session for it. Lina Khan and Rep. Khanna pointed out, separately, that federal law already lets regulators charge companies and CEOs for dangerous products — the authority exists, unused, on the books right now.
The New York Times ran the ledger line for the day: lawmakers agree the risks are rising. They also say they have no quick fix. That's the full transaction from a day of testimony — an agreement to agree, entered nowhere, attached to no bill, no vote, no rule.
Meanwhile the Speaker rejected a moratorium outright, citing China. The President called the whole conversation "negative forces" predicting things that won't happen.
Run the two columns side by side, hon. Rules passed on AI this week: zero. Public land identified for AI infrastructure this week: pending disclosure, request filed, don't hold your breath. One column is all speeches. The other column is deeds, filed with the Bureau of Land Management, moving under a different department, on a schedule nobody in that hearing room set. Whichever number comes back faster tells you which ledger this administration is actually keeping.
“They're not lying to you, that's the sick part — they're telling you straight to your face there's no fix, and in the same breath the Interior Department's out here drawing up a list of your land for the data centers. It's not gridlock, it's a division of labor: the talking arm freezes so the building arm can move. Watch your water bill and your power bill before you watch the hearing.”
“Look, nobody's against safety. The Speaker's already said it, China doesn't wait for hearings, so no, we're not doing a moratorium — a moratorium is how you lose the race and still get the dangerous AI, just somebody else's. As for the land, that's an Interior Department siting decision, totally separate track, nothing to do with — wait, is Burgum on this call? Never mind, strike the land part.”
The receipts
Former President Barack Obama privately urged Democrats to prioritize oversight of artificial intelligence as the revolutionary technology reaches new heights. Obama, who has become a sage-like figure to Democrats since leaving office in 2017, gave his insights on AI while speaking at a private fundraising event on Thursday, the New York…
Former Trump adviser and artificial intelligence and crypto czar David Sacks endorsed an industry slowdown of AI development but rejected the altruistic framing of the move by industry leaders. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call on Saturday for the AI industry to self-impose a slowdown of development has gained steam after OpenAI CEO Sam…
Researchers at AI companies have been warning about safety risks, and industry leaders have called for a slowdown in development.
Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed said that there are "a lot of real risks" in artificial intelligence.
House Speaker Mike Johnson rejected an AI moratorium, warning China could overtake the U.S. as Anthropic, Elon Musk and Sam Altman push for a slowdown.
On "This Week," the House Democratic Leader Jeffries said lawmakers need to "act urgently" to address artificial intelligence.
Barack Obama warned AI could become dangerous without greater oversight and urged Hakeem Jeffries to launch a very public conversation on it.
House Speaker Mike Johnson warned on Sunday of competitive risks from China, and Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, said Congress should start regulatory talks this week.
During a private fund-raiser, the former president warned that the technology could be “dangerous” if not managed urgently and with a clear plan.
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) pushed for more artificial intelligence regulation in the wake of tech leaders pressing for slowing down the technology's development. “This isn't previous tech.
President Donald Trump's administration is making an aggressive push to find public lands to use for building artificial intelligence data centers, according to a Friday report in The Washington Sun. The US Department of the Interior, under the leadership of Secretary Doug Burgum, has pushed the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to…
Utah's Republican Gov. Spencer Cox told "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" that the government needs to come together to "protect the public" on AI, saying "government doesn't get this right often either, but we should be at the table working together, and that's what we've done in Utah."
US Sen. Bernie Sanders is set to convene a bipartisan hearing next week focusing on the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence technology, a move that comes amid more warnings from experts about the potentially existential threats posed by unregulated AI development. Axios reported Wednesday that Sanders (I-Vt.) will hold the…
Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton (Ariz.) said Sunday that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) should keep lawmakers in session to address the risks of rapidly advancing artificial intelligence models. “We should take the warnings of the leading investigators of AI very, very seriously,”
GOP Rep. Mike Flood (Neb.) said Sunday the federal government should implement artificial intelligence safeguards to prevent the technology from falling into the wrong hands. During an interview on NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday,”
President Trump said there were "negative forces" predicting things that he says won't happen.
· Out-of-Touch Trump Says Communities That Reject AI Data Centers Will Be 'Backwards and Poor' from the morgue, 31 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.