The Brief

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday to discourage state governments from regulating artificial intelligence and urge Congress to pass a law preempting such regulations.

The order is likely to hit hardest in California, which since 2016 has passed more laws to regulate artificial intelligence than any other state, according to a Stanford report from earlier this year. California is also home to the world’s leading AI companies, including Anthropic, Google, Nvidia and OpenAI.

Trump’s order would require the heads of the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice to challenge state AI laws. It also calls for the development of model AI legislation to preempt or supersede state law unless those laws address children’s safety, data center infrastructure, state government use of AI or other yet-to-be-determined areas.

For states that continue to regulate AI, the order instructs federal agencies to explore whether they can restrict grants to them, including by revoking funding known as Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment. California has a potential $1.8 billion in broadband funding at stake, much of which was committed to specific projects earlier this month and is set to deliver internet access to more than 300,000 people.

In a social media post earlier this week and remarks from the Oval Office today, Trump said the executive order was written to prevent businesses from needing to comply with laws from multiple states and that having to do so threatens America’s competitive advantage over other nations. Investors in tech startups, such as the Menlo Park venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, have urged the president to restrict state AI regulation and celebrated the president signing the order.

Laws affected by the order

Trump’s order specifically criticized a Colorado law that requires testing and disclosure of AI that makes consequential decisions about people’s lives and seeks to prevent discrimination, a standard California lawmakers may revisit next year.

Among recently-passed California laws that federal agencies may challenge are:

• A ban on AI makers blaming the technology itself for harming people when defending themselves in court.
• A prohibition on algorithms raising prices.
• A requirement that the makers of AI supply the public with tools to identify AI-generated photos, videos and audio so that they can better spot fakes. 
• A law going into effect next month that requires AI makers to disclose details about the data they use to train their models.

Members of Congress routinely call California an example of AI regulation run amok, but lawmakers from both major parties have supported regulating AI, with more than 70 laws passed by 27 states this year, according to a report by the Transparency Coalition. California again led the nation with the passage of roughly a dozen laws as Texas, Montana, Utah and Arkansas followed with the most AI bills signed into law this year.

The executive order comes on the heels of a second attempt in Congress to preempt state AI laws, which fell short last week. Republican members of Congress first attempted to ban AI regulation by state governments for 10 years this spring, an initiative derailed in part by concerns about the fate of a law that protects country music musicians in Tennesse and others that seek to block child sexual abuse material.

A look at public opinion

Polls show Californians and Americans support AI regulation. A Carnegie Endowment California poll released in October found that nearly 80% of Californians strongly or somewhat agree that, when it comes to AI, safety should be prioritized over innovation. A September Gallup poll also found that four out of five Americans want lawmakers to prioritize safety over innovation, even if that means the technology is developed more slowly.

In addition to endangering the lives of children, artificial intelligence can lead to false arrests, discriminate against job applicants and employees and deny people government benefits or health care that they’re entitled to. The technology is also power hungry, potentially driving up electricity rates and endangering clean energy goals. It also needs large amounts of fresh water for the cooling systems in data centers. Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that sued to stop a California data center project one year ago, called the executive order an early Christmas gift to big tech.

What opponents say

Opponents of the executive order say it leaves Californians vulnerable to harm.

“Make no mistake: this order doesn’t create new protections, it removes them. That’s not governing. That’s a dereliction of duty wrapped in yet another distraction from a fracturing MAGA movement and a president who doesn’t understand the real dangers of rapidly advancing tech,” state Sen. Tom Umberg, a Democrat representing Santa Ana, said in a statement last month, when a draft of the executive order leaked to the press.

In the California Legislature enthusiasm for regulating AI shows little sign of abating. More than 100 film industry workers from groups like the Animation Guild and SAG-AFTRA showed up at a committee hearing earlier this week about protecting the work of creatives. Many spoke in support of a bill requiring AI companies to disclose what copyrighted material they use to train their models.

Animation Guild president Danny Lin said at the hearing that AI threatens nearly 40,000 jobs in California’s film, television and animation industries.

“L.A. is bleeding out before my very eyes,” Lin told state lawmakers.

In response to the executive order Lin told CalMatters calling out a Colorado law that seeks to prevent discrimination and protect working class people doesn’t give her confidence that the legislation the president is calling for will address the concerns of creatives whose work is used to train generative AI models.

“It’s pretty apparent that if we had a federal government that was actually focused on regulating this technology then the states would not feel the need to step in and create state specific legislation,” she said.

More on AI

Andy Pages drove in two runs with a bases-loaded single in the seventh inning to give Los Angeles the lead, and the Dodgers beat the Atlanta Braves 4-1 on Wednesday night to clinch their NL Division Series.

The Dodgers won back-to-back games in Atlanta to take the best-of-five matchup 3-1 and advance to the National League Championship Series as they seek to become the first NL team to win three straight World Series.

Pages lined a 3-2 pitch from Robert Suarez up the middle to drive in Teoscar Hernández, who singled off starter Tyler Mahle, and pinch-runner Tommy Edman for a 3-1 lead. Didier Fuentes walked pinch-hitter Josue De Paula and Kyle Tucker to load the bases. Edman ran for De Paula.

Max Muncy’s solo shot off Raisel Iglesias in the ninth padded the lead and gave the slugger 19 postseason homers with the Dodgers, extending his franchise record.

Dodgers right-hander Tyler Glasnow, making his first start since Sept. 24, allowed only one hit but walked five batters in 4 2/3 innings. After he issued two walks in the fifth, left-hander Alex Vesia ended the inning on Matt Olson’s groundout to second base.

The missed opportunity left the Braves with 18 walks in the series, and none scored.

Glasnow and four relievers combined to give up just three hits. Tanner Scott pitched a perfect eighth before Edwin Díaz got three quick outs for the save.

Mahle, a native of Newport Beach, California, who grew up a Dodgers fan, allowed two runs — one earned — in 6 1/3 innings.

Michael Harris II hit Glasnow’s first pitch for a single before stealing second and eventually scoring from third on a wild pitch that bounced off catcher Will Smith’s chest protector.

The Dodgers pulled even in the second with the help of two Atlanta errors. Shohei Ohtani walked, stole second and advanced to third on catcher Sean Murphy’s errant throw into center field. Muncy’s pop fly into shallow left field was dropped by shortstop Mauricio Dubón for another error, allowing Ohtani to score.

Hernández crashed into the wall while attempting to catch Ozzie Albies’ double off Vesia leading off the sixth. Hernández pointed to his head and neck when talking to an athletic trainer but remained in the game.

Edgardo Henriquez stranded Albies at second. Henriquez allowed one hit in 1 2/3 scoreless innings for the win.

Injury report

Dodgers second baseman Miguel Rojas was held out after leaving Tuesday night’s 3-1 win during an at-bat in the eighth inning with lower back soreness. Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts said Rojas would not be available off the bench.

Ronald Acuña Jr. started in right field for Atlanta one day after being moved to designated hitter in a late lineup change due to right knee soreness.

Up next

The Dodgers will face Milwaukee or San Diego in Game 1 of the NLCS on Sunday.

The Democratic National Committee on Wednesday sued President Donald Trump’s administration for recent television advertisements that promoted his political message while costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that the ads are illegal government-sponsored propaganda and accuses Trump of personally directing them. It asks the court to declare the ads illegal and stop the use of federal funds to pay for them.

Trump has faced bipartisan backlash for the ads, which glorify him and echo his campaign pitch as voters cast early ballots with the midterm elections less than a month away.

The spots, which began airing in September, already have cost more than $12 million to run, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact, and a total of $20 million in Homeland Security Department funding has been tapped to pay for them.

Responding Monday to the criticism, Trump defended the ads as “positive promotion for our Great U.S.A.” but said he’d pay for them using his MAGA Inc. super PAC going forward.

But on Tuesday, the fifth ad in the campaign began airing with the notice “paid for by the U.S. Government,” promoting Trump’s military actions in Venezuela earlier this year. The same day, Trump made it clear he hasn’t committed to reimbursing any money that has already been spent, telling reporters “we’ll decide.”

DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement that Trump is misusing taxpayer dollars in “a last-ditch attempt to save Republicans in November.”

“Americans deserve better than to have their hard-earned tax dollars used for Trump’s illegal schemes,” he added.

Legal experts have suggested the ads run afoul of a federal statute against congressionally appropriated money being used for “publicity or propaganda,” and potentially other federal laws. The Homeland Security money tapped for the ads comes from a $175 million package Congress gave to the department as part of Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda.

The White House has defended the ads as public service announcements akin to what past administrations have done to promote various policies. Legal experts have said the recent ads differ from many past public service announcements because they aren’t aimed at helping members of the public benefit from specific government programs.

The defendants in the lawsuit — Trump, the White House, DHS and the Office of Management and Budget — didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Fall has only just begun, but it's already time to start thinking about the quintessential winter bug: the flu.

The annual flu season usually starts in October or November. But this year, it looks like the flu started to pick up in early September.

"There are enough signs pointing in the same direction to make me think, 'OK, yes. This is the start of flu season,'" says Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The percentage of people testing positive for the flu in the West has been rising steadily since around the beginning of September, she says. And the number of people showing up in emergency departments because of the flu has also been rising for weeks, she adds.

"It's very uncommon to see flu activity rising this early. It's activity that we might normally see more like November or December," she says.

The timing of the flu season isn't the only thing that's odd. It's also unusual that flu activity seems to have started in Western states, such as California, Washington, Hawaii and Alaska.

"It typically starts in the South and then expands from there," Rivers says. "So two uncommon developments there."

Rivers stresses that the amount of flu activity is still very low in most parts of the country. But that's starting to change as the flu picks up nationwide.

It's unclear why flu activity would have started so early, and in such an unusual part of the country. But one clue might be a new variant that evolved a mutation, which appears to make it better at evading existing immunity, especially among teenagers.

"That's our best argument for what's going on right now in terms of this early flu season," says Dr. Alex Greninger, a virologist who heads infectious disease diagnostics at the University of Washington. Doctors there are seeing as much flu right now as they usually would around Christmas, and the mutated variant appears to be common, he says.

So Greninger, Rivers and others are urging people to think about getting their flu shot earlier than usual.

"It's crucial that people get an influenza vaccine," says Scott Hensley, a virologist at the University of Pennsylvania. "And this might be a year that people might want to get a vaccine early."

But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hasn't been promoting flu shots as it usually does. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the CDC, is a long-time vaccine skeptic.

"It is disappointing that CDC is quiet given that flu kills of hundreds of kids a year and can result in tens of thousands of hospitalizations and tens of thousands of deaths," says Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned last year as the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protest what he called political interference at the agency.

The CDC declined to make an official available to NPR for this story. In a statement, a CDC spokesperson said, "CDC is developing a communications strategy to provide clear, accessible information about influenza vaccination and other critical steps people can take to protect themselves during respiratory virus season. This includes information about the benefits and risks of vaccination to support informed decision-making."
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