The Environmental Protection Agency is repealing rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas, an action the agency said would remove more than $300 billion in costs for the industry and help “unleash” American energy.
The new rule, which is expected to face immediate legal challenges, also could prevent future administrations from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. It
represents a fundamental shift from efforts by Democratic Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama to address climate change and clean up industrial pollution, often in low-income and majority Black or Hispanic communities.
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Trump lashed out at AI critics on social media, saying that the AI companies calling for government regulation of their sector could end up bankrupt.
“Concerning AI, when, in the History of Business, did anyone see the Leaders of an Industry call for Regulation that, if strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy?” Trump said.
The president then said that claims that AI posed a threat to humanity was “hoax” along the lines of his two impeachments during his first term.
“AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX,” Trump said.
In a post on her Instagram page Monday morning signed by the couple, Bettina Trump wrote that the man, Umar Kremlev, was a “dear friend,” who “very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding.”
ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative website, reported earlier Monday that the wedding between Trump Jr. and socialite Bettina Anderson in the Bahamas was heavily funded by Kremlev, a Russian oligarch who heads the International Boxing Association. He also has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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Democratic-led states and cities filed lawsuits Monday challenging a federal rule set to take Friday that they say gives the Trump administration broad discretion to deny green cards to immigrants who use food stamps and other public benefits.
The lawsuits challenge Trump’s plan to revive a “public charge” rule that he originally imposed during his first term but that was reversed under President Joe Biden.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading a coalition of 21 other states in one of the suits, said the rule would force needy immigrant families to choose between seeking assistance and seeking legal status in the country.
The Environmental Protection Agency is repealing rules that limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas, an action the agency said would remove more than $300 billion in costs for the industry and help “unleash” American energy.
The rule change, first proposed last year, represents a fundamental shift from efforts by Democratic Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama address climate change and clean up industrial pollution.
EPA officials said the change would allow utilities to make the best decisions for their ratepayers rather than be forced to closed aging or inefficient plants.
Former Sen. Joe Manchin said Monday that he will campaign on behalf of Republican Sen. Susan Collins as she fights a tough reelection campaign in Maine.
Manchin was a longtime Democrat and centrist who became an independent while nearing the end of his time in office in 2024. He said during an appearance on CNBC that he considers Collins a dedicated public servant.
“You lose the Susan Collins of the Senate, you’re losing the soul of the Senate. Basically, a person you can talk to, wants to do the right thing all the time,” Manchin said.
Collins, the only Republican senator in New England, faces Democratic former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson in November. The race is critical to Democratic aspirations to take control of the Senate.
Laura Allen, whose family owns a Texas ranch, was among the people who turned out Monday for the announcement of the lawsuit. The Trump administration plans to build a wall and other border infrastructure through the remote Big Bend area.
“Where this project goes will be right through the middle of the property, over 2 miles from water,” Allen, a former county judge and two-time Trump voter, said in Marfa, Texas. “All of our working facilities will now be behind the walls, with no guarantee of what will happen to us.”
She pointed out that illegal border crossings have plunged since Trump returned to office.
“Thank you, President Trump. You’ve secured the border. But now let it go. It’s time,” she said.
The Kennedy Center Board of Trustees plans to propose adding Trump’s name to the facility’s exterior in recognition of his saving the building from its “precarious fiscal position,” according to a new court filing in a suit aimed at blocking the addition of his name to the building.
The filing made by Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, an ex-officio member of the board who’s led an effort to block Trump putting his name on the building, said she was alerting the court to the proposal because it could implicate a pending decision before the court.
“The Board understands that without such appropriate recognition it is unlikely that President Trump will provide the fundamental oversight of the renovation of the main building and lead the fiscal rescue of the Center,” the board wrote in the proposed resolution.
The document proposes 10 options for adding the president’s name to the building’s exterior.
The president has long resisted efforts for greater government oversight of AI, embracing his philosophy of “I alone can fix it.” He revoked a Biden executive order on AI oversight and didn’t provide a fuller order of his own until more than 16 months later this past June.
Now AI has emerged as a political liability ahead of November’s elections, with many voters opposing the construction of data centers and expressing worries that AI could lead to job losses and undermine the education of children.
Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor, Democratic congressman and White House chief of staff, said Saturday that the Anthropic CEO’s essay was “an admission that we’re driving down a dark, winding road on wet pavement with the headlights off. And where’s President Trump? Looks like he nodded off again. It’s time to turn the lights on, put both hands on the wheel, and regain control before it’s too late.”
The yield on the 10-year Treasury hit 5% on Monday for the first time since 2023.
The upward pressure on inflation has much of Wall Street expecting the Federal Reserve to hike its main interest rate on Wednesday, despite Trump’s lobbying.
Such a move then filters out through the rest of the bond market, makes it more expensive for U.S. households and businesses to borrow money, slows the overall economy and undercuts prices for investments. That hopefully would remove some of inflation’s fuel, though Trump has been lobbying for lower interest rates instead of higher.
Besides high inflation, worries about rising debt for the U.S. and other governments have helped send longer-term Treasury yields to their highest levels in years. The jump has already led to the highest average long-term mortgage rate in more than 14 months.
So far, the jump in oil prices has helped send the average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline across the country to nearly $4.32 from $4.08 a month ago and $3.18 a year ago, according to AAA.
Monday’s average price of diesel across the U.S. jumped to a record $6.23, the organization reported.
Oil industry stocks are up, including a 1.3% gain for ExxonMobil, following another jump in oil prices. Brent crude was up 4.2% Monday to $109.05 as fighting in the Middle East keeps squeezing the global flow of oil.
An important Saudi oil pipeline will mostly be out of service for weeks following an attack last week, two regional officials told The Associated Press. The pipeline offered a way for Saudi Arabia to shift exports to the Red Sea and avoid the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz, where Iranian attacks have stifled the movement of oil tankers.
While the prospect of a de-escalation of war in Iran may have dimmed, ING commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote Monday that the situation remains fluid and “sizable” volumes of oil have been exiting the strait.
Artificial-intelligence stocks have been pressured by worries their prices shot too high in the frenzy around the technology. Those concerns jumped to another level over the weekend after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that a deliberate and global slowdown in AI development is needed for safety.
Amodei said there’s a risk that AI could lead a swarm of agents capable of taking over the entire internet within six to 12 months.
Nvidia, whose profits have soared because its chips are helping to train AI models, sank 3.5% and was the heaviest weight on the market because of its massive size.
SpaceX, which gets a chunk of its business from AI, fell 1.7% after Elon Musk said he agrees with Amodei. Softbank Group, the Japanese giant that is a major investor in OpenAI, lost 10.7% in Tokyo after OpenAI’s Sam Altman likewise supported the concept of a slowdown and would likely delay its planned IPO.
The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to repeal limits on planet-warming air pollution from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas. Administrator Lee Zeldin has said this would remove billions of dollars in costs for the industry and help “unleash” American energy.
The rule change, proposed last year, could be announced as soon as Monday, according to two people familiar with the proposal, and represents a fundamental shift from efforts by Democratic Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama to address climate change and clean up industrial pollution, often in low-income and majority Black or Hispanic communities.
The rule, which is expected to face immediate legal challenges, also could prevent future administrations from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, the people familiar with the proposal said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the rule had not yet been made final.
The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
— By Matthew Daly
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump posted on social media.
The president specifically said his administration has already stopped the AI company Anthropic “from doing bad, or potentially bad” things.
Trump pushed back against calls by tech leaders at Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft and others to have greater regulation of AI to ensure it is developed in ways that promote safety, address legal liability and preserve national security. He’s opposed such efforts and claims doing so could cause China to eclipse America on AI development.
“There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China,” Trump said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson says it’s time for Trump to “summon everyone together” and take the lead at the White House, rather than Congress.
“I think we need to go in a big room, close the door, and sort this out,” Johnson said over the weekend on CNN.
The Republican speaker is close to Trump, who has downplayed the risks over AI, and Johnson shied from Congress taking action.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said his party puts a “high priority” on action and will address the bipartisan proposal for a so-called AI “Kill Switch” during their Tuesday caucus meeting.
“We should take decisive action now,” Jeffries said on ABC.
The vice president told reporters Monday morning that there are risks to any technology, but “I don’t think Americans should be scared of anything.”
Vance said the Trump administration is concerned about AI but wants to make sure it’s regulating the technology smartly.
“Personally, I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them. It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse,” Vance said. “So I think we just have to be careful about this.”
As technology leaders have issued warnings in recent days, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer says Congress should get a “full accounting” of how the Trump administration is working to put guardrails around testing for AI models, what it is doing to prevent American technology from flowing to China and how the U.S. would defend itself against the potential for increasingly sophisticated AI-enabled cyberattacks.
“Warning bells are ringing louder than they ever have — and the Trump administration is looking the other way,” said Schumer, D-N.Y. If the Trump administration does not act, “then Congress must.”
“The only ‘fears’ Americans have about our elections are being fueled by extreme liberal Democrats who refuse to support commonsense legislation that ensures Americans, and Americans only, decide our elections and other basic election security measures like Voter ID,” spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in a statement.
Litigation about election rules has reached such a pitch that the National Bar Association announced a hotline to help voters who encounter trouble casting ballots amid last-minute changes.
Every election, the two major parties mobilize massive operations of attorneys, staffers and volunteers to monitor polling places and ballot counting. The Republican National Committee said it’s already recruited a record number of poll watchers.
“We’ve built the largest election integrity operation in Republican Party history because our mission is simple: secure every legal vote and ensure Americans can trust the outcome of our elections,” RNC spokeswoman Ally Triolo said.
Law professor Rick Hasen, who directs UCLA’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, said it’s important not to unduly scare voters about what might happen, but it’s “hard to walk the line between alarmism and complacency.”
During his first term, Trump refused to accept his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden and attempted to overturn the vote, only to be defied by career officials and more establishment Republicans. He’s stocked his second administration with people who helped his 2020 efforts, used the federal government to target his political enemies and pardoned more than 1,000 people prosecuted for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that was intended to halt the certification of Biden’s win.
Trump demanded Republicans redraw House maps to create more safe seats for themselves, held last week’s unusual midterm convention and has tried to change election rules even as states begin to send out ballots.
Democratic state parties announced their “New Battlefield Project” on Monday, an effort to recruit 10,000 volunteers to guard polling places in case armed federal officers show up.
Activists are planning mass protests if the Trump administration tries to interfere with voting or ballot counting. And legal scholars are distributing white papers advising judges how to respond if the government tries to seize ballots.
The unprecedented efforts are in response to Trump’s equally unprecedented moves to interfere with voting this year, including attempts to impose proof-of-citizenship requirements and directing the Postal Service to decide which voters should get a mail ballot.
“We have never prepared for an election sabotage event like we have now,” said Ezra Levin of the left-leaning group Indivisible.
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