Congressional Republicans are rapidly running out of time to do anything that might preserve their control of Congress. Indeed, early midterms voting began this week in Idaho, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Virginia, and mail ballots will go out in 16 states before the end of the month. Members of both chambers are frantic to wrap up work in Washington and go home to campaign; the House is expected to go into recess at the end of this week until after the elections. And there’s a long list of unfinished congressional business that will likely stay unfinished for now, including very big things like a farm bill, a defense bill, health-care legislation, Trump’s election-law demands, and pretty much anything meaningful on living costs.

Many vulnerable Republicans are acutely aware that amid the old business they’re shirking, new and much more urgent issues are arising. This last weekend, the big issue that’s been lurking in the background all year, the potentially horrific effects of onrushing artificial-intelligence development, exploded onto the scene with a series of demands for some sort of regulation from AI industry executives themselves.

Americans are already skeptical and fearful about AI, as new polling indicates:

The Trump accelerationist view of AI is way below the Legalize Heroin Line of political doom. pic.twitter.com/S5P759CoWR— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) September 16, 2026

The Trump accelerationist view of AI is way below the Legalize Heroin Line of political doom. pic.twitter.com/S5P759CoWR

But once Americans fully realize that many of the industry’s reigning oligarchs are warning that we all need to protect ourselves from unwanted by-products of the AI boom that might range up to the extinction of the human race, voters could quickly decide that November should be an extinction event for the people running the country. It is, as Joe Biden might have said, a BFD.

Yet even as the House assembled for what is likely its final week of work before the midterms, President Trump made it extremely clear that he did not want Congress or even the AI industry itself to slow it all down or institute “guardrails” to avoid a catastrophe. In five separate Truth Social posts, the president denounced AI fears as a “HOAX” and basically said “Hands off!” This was the most sweeping in the series of edicts:

The only control or “guardrails” that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that,........

© Daily Intelligencer