USA under Trump:
AI company leaders are committed to self-policing
Sep 29, 2026, 11:34 p.m. Reading time: 1 min.
US President Donald Trump at a meeting with the executives of various tech companies.dpa
Tech bosses sign agreement in the White House +++ Supreme Court allows deportations to third countries +++ Rubio sees foreign actor behind possible attempted attack on US base +++ all news in the live blog
In our live blog we will inform you about all developments in Donald Trump's second presidency.
Hannah Storm
Tech bosses sign deal
The USA relies on voluntary self-regulation instead of legal regulations when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI): According to President Donald Trump, the heads of the most important US tech companies signed an agreement on self-regulation at a meeting in the White House on Tuesday. The text is “morally binding,” said Trump.
“They will police themselves,” the president continued of the agreement. At the meeting, Trump again justified his rejection of legal AI regulations with the USA's technological lead over China. “We are leading and we want to keep it that way,” said the 80-year-old. He also announced a decree renaming AI “superintelligence.”
Trump invited the company bosses because of increasing warnings about the risks of AI. He praised the managers at the meeting as “the most brilliant people in the world.” Sitting next to the US President were his former advisor, the tech billionaire Elon Musk, and the chairman of the chip company Nvidia, Jensen Huang. The roughly two dozen tech representatives also included Mark Zuckerberg from Meta, Dario Amodei from Anthropic, Jeff Bezos from Amazon and OpenAI President Greg Brockman.
In the past few months, incidents have repeatedly become known in which AI agents became independent and acted differently than intended. For example, OpenAI confirmed a newspaper report that its AI tools had accessed US federal agency websites. Nevertheless, Trump called AI skeptics “conspiracy theorists” and “traitors.”
Anthropic and OpenAI recently advocated slowing down the development of the technology. As the “Financial Times” reported on Tuesday, Anthropic is also warning investors about possible “existential risks to humanity” in the prospectus for its planned IPO.
The AI meeting was initiated by the Chairman of the House of Representatives, Republican and Trump confidant Mike Johnson. He spoke out on CNBC in favor of a minimum of regulation: “I think a little bit of control, a little bit of transparency, a little bit of external scrutiny would take away the nervousness of a lot of people,” he said.
According to a recent survey for CNN, 82 percent of US citizens are “concerned” about the rapid pace of AI development. Accordingly, 87 percent are also concerned about the construction of the necessary data centers.
Trump again downplayed the concerns. The data centers would soon be "very popular" as surrounding communities became "very rich," he said. Even in Republican-controlled states, however, there is considerable resistance, as critics say the data factories continue to drive up local energy and water prices.
The discussion about AI has already created unusual alliances: the left-wing US Senator Bernie Sanders and the ultra-right former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon recently appeared one after the other at a conference where they warned about the dangers of AI.
The topic also plays a major role before the US congressional elections at the beginning of November. Both Democratic and Trump Republican lawmakers have drafted bills to better regulate the use of AI. However, it is almost certain that Congress will not pass any AI laws before the elections. That could change if the Democrats take control of Parliament, as pollsters predict.
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Hannah Storm
Criticism of Trump over government-funded videos
A few weeks before the US midterm elections, several government-sponsored videos with messages from President Donald Trump have caused a stir. Democrats described the videos as election advertising, and politicians from Trump's Republicans also expressed criticism. Tax money cannot be used for election advertising in the USA. The White House rejected the criticism.
The videos are primarily staged as an anti-communism message. One resembles a Trump election commercial from 2024. Trump speaks of the “final battle” in the black and white video. “Communists, Marxists and fascists will be driven out.” In another, a choir in the background sings the words “Love me” over and over again. Trump's voice can be heard: "America will never be a communist country." The video says: “funded by the US government”.
The Democratic minority leader in the US Senate, Chuck Schumer, spoke of a “corrupt use of American tax dollars”. Trump aired a partisan election commercial on several channels during prime time that US taxpayers paid for, Schumer said in the Senate.
Some Republican senators also expressed criticism. John Thune, Republican majority leader in the US Senate, said Trump's message should not be funded by taxpayer money, according to The Hill newspaper. Republican Mike Rounds made similar comments: “I think they need to rethink that strategy,” he said.
According to CNN, the White House said the videos were “clearly not election advertising.” Rather, these are campaigns to educate the public.
The Wall Street Journal wrote that the spots had been broadcast almost 90 times nationwide by Sunday evening alone, including on Fox News and CBS. The videos were shown more than 2,300 times on regional channels. According to CNN, the video was broadcast during at least two NFL football games on Sunday.
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Success for the Trump administration in the Supreme Court
According to a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, the US government of President Donald Trump is currently allowed to continue deporting migrants to so-called third countries. The Supreme Court granted the government's request to temporarily overrule a lower court's ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court scheduled a hearing in December to hear arguments from both sides before making a final ruling.
At its core, the process is about the question of whether immigrants can be deported to a country that is not their home country without being able to raise objections first. Deportation to third countries is a way for the US government to circumvent uncooperative home states. The Trump administration concluded agreements with several host countries, especially in Africa and Latin America. Previous deportation flights to non-home countries included South Sudan. The US Department of Homeland Security is responsible for this.
According to estimates by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, around 15,000 people were deported to third countries between January 20 and December 31, 2025, the majority of them to Mexico. Overall, this is a “vanishingly small proportion” of the annual deportations, which the US government estimates at one million.
In February, however, a federal judge ordered a halt to the practice. It did not prohibit deportations to third countries per se. However, immigrants must have the chance to raise objections to the deportation goal. This is the only way to ensure that they are not threatened with torture or persecution there.
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Investigations against WEF employee over alleged Trump attack discontinued
A few hours before President Donald Trump's appearance in Davos in January, an employee of the World Economic Forum (WEF) was arrested on suspicion of an attack. The Federal Prosecutor's Office has now announced that the allegations from an anonymous email could not have been confirmed. She stopped the proceedings. The Swiss Tamedia newspapers and ARD had previously publicized the case.
The usual WEF annual meeting took place in Davos in January, to which hundreds of entrepreneurs and politicians from all over the world come.
According to the reports, an Iranian-born woman who worked as an IT specialist at the WEF was accused in the email to the American embassy in Bern of having coordinated a planned assassination attempt on Trump. The Federal Prosecutor's Office immediately arrested and interrogated the woman and commissioned a police investigation, as she reports.
According to media reports, the woman was not at the WEF annual meeting in Davos, but at the WEF headquarters in Cologny near Geneva. Investigators questioned them late into the night and confiscated and examined their phones and computers. “It became clear that the allegations made in the anonymous email could not be confirmed,” said the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. “This applied to all aspects of the allegations, which is why the proceedings were closed.”
According to media reports, the woman was fired shortly after the incident. The WEF remains silent about the reasons. When asked, it initially did not comment on the case.
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Rubio: 'Foreign actor' behind possible attack at British air base
According to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “a foreign actor” is behind the possibly planned attack near a British air base used by the USA. “This clearly has the handwriting of a foreign actor at play,” Rubio told Fox News on Monday (local time).
Rubio initially did not want to provide further details, but added that “a lot more information about this would be known” in the coming days. At this point in time he can only say this much: “It is a very serious matter and it has been (...) responded to appropriately.”
British media reported on Monday that anti-terror police were investigating a possible connection to Iran. A little later, the Iranian embassy “strongly” denied any involvement and spoke of “malicious speculation.”
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Sabrina Frangos
Pentagon praises Germany in front of US Congress
The US Department of Defense has explicitly acknowledged Germany's efforts to increase defense spending before the US Congress. NATO allies like Germany have taken credible steps to fulfill their commitments from the defense alliance's summit in The Hague well ahead of the 2035 deadline, according to a statement from Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of state at the Pentagon, to the US Senate Armed Services Committee.
Under the impression of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine and at the urging of US President Donald Trump, NATO agreed at the NATO summit in The Hague last year to invest at least 3.5 percent of gross domestic product in defense in the future. An additional 1.5 percent should then be added for defense-related expenses, such as infrastructure.
Overall, five percent of GDP should be invested in defense and security every year from 2035 at the latest - more than ever since the Cold War. Germany wants to achieve the five percent target by 2029.
Germany was also mentioned by name as a model example with a view to closer cooperation in arms production. Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) and US Defense Minister Pete Hegseth signed a declaration of intent on increased cooperation in the middle of this month.
It is not the first time that Colby has spoken positively about Germany. In August, at NATO headquarters, he praised Germany as a model for other allies. What the Federal Republic has initiated in the past 18 months is “an extraordinary tectonic shift,” a “historic change,” he explained. Germany had moved from extensive demilitarization to rapid rearmament.
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FBI deputy resigns
FBI Deputy Director Andrew Bailey has resigned. “It is with great pride in what we have accomplished that I announce that I am resigning from office to return to my family in Missouri,” he said on Platform X. Before joining the FBI, Bailey served as Missouri's attorney general.
In an unusual move, the role of FBI deputy was doubled under President Donald Trump. Bailey initially shared the role with Dan Bongino, who announced his retirement at the end of last year. Like FBI Director Kash Patel, Bongino was considered a staunch Trump loyalist with a penchant for conspiracy theories, and critics said he was unqualified for the office. Christopher Raia took over the vacant position.
Before Bailey's resignation, several US media outlets reported an extremely tense relationship with FBI Director Patel, who has upended the agency's leadership since taking office. According to CBS, Patel excluded Bailey from meetings he was supposed to attend because Bailey repeatedly criticized events in the FBI as unconstitutional.
Several US media also reported that Bailey had been brought into the agency as a possible successor to Patel. There had been repeated speculation that Patel could lose his job.
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Robert Dikomeit
Trump denies offering arms to China
US President Donald Trump has denied offering to sell US weapons to Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Trump on Monday rejected statements from US Ambassador to China David Perdue. The president said he had not discussed arms deals with Xi. “The US government has no plans to sell weapons to China,” a government official told AFP on Monday.
