Washington is split over whether to slow AI down, and the White House is siding with the industry — good for Nvidia, OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic and Palantir, worrying for people who fear job losses and rising power bills.

• Trump and House Speaker Johnson called the six AI bosses to a White House lunch as pressure builds in Congress to rein in AI.
• Trump wants AI development with no limits, arguing the US has to beat China and that AI is now driving economic growth.
• OpenAI scrapped the release of its next model, GPT-6.1 Astra, after internal safety concerns and a string of AI mishaps across the industry.
• Anger over data centers — higher electricity bills, water use, land — is turning into a midterm election issue in both parties.
• Pope Leo XIV publicly questioned Huang's safety promises, saying experts' warnings deserve to be taken seriously; Trump has called such warnings a hoax.

Outlook: Expect Washington to keep resisting real AI limits while local fights over data centers and electricity costs grow louder into the midterms.