Washington, DC

1. Xi arrives to fanfare, criticism
2. Senate calendar drama
3. New AI proposal
4. UN AI split-screen
5. Hardline Sudan diplomacy
6. Trump’s DC takeover

PDB: Judge orders White House to reinstate banned media

FDA nominee testifies before Senate panel … Costco reports earnings … Netanyahu addresses UNGA

Xi visit meets with Republican criticism

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s arrival in Washington — and the fanfare surrounding his visit — is running into criticism from some Republicans who are concerned about the optics. One person close to the White House told Semafor that rolling out the red carpet for Xi is “weird if POTUS lavishes a bunch of praise while simultaneously [saying] China is our biggest adversary.” Republicans seem to agree: Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker delivered a floor speech insinuating President Donald Trump should not be hosting Xi. The White House is brushing off the criticism, with spokeswoman Anna Kelly noting that Trump “is reciprocating” Xi’s “hospitality” after Trump visited China over the summer. The two countries have already agreed to extend a trade truce until next year, according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

— Shelby Talcott and Eleanor Mueller

Push to prioritize Husted data center bill

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, wants the Senate to stay in session until the body votes on his endangered colleague’s signature bill. Moreno told Semafor he believes the Senate should stay in until there’s a roll call vote on the Ratepayer Protection Act, data center-focused energy legislation from Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio. Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., blocked the bill last week. “Absolutely, 100%, they all hide behind Martin now, like it’s one Democrat. We need to put them on the record,” Moreno said. GOP senators have discussed the idea but made no final decision. “I have heard a lot of support from my colleagues about getting it done,” Husted told Semafor. “I hope we give [Democrats] another chance to get it right.” The Senate is scheduled to be in next week, but may cut the session short so lawmakers can hit the campaign trail.

— Burgess Everett

Sens move to force AI firms to disclose more

The push to regulate AI is intensifying in Washington, as a bipartisan group of senators rolls out an AI transparency bill today. According to details shared first with Semafor, the measure from Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., Katie Britt, R-Ala., Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, and James Lankford, R-Okla., would tap the Federal Trade Commission to enforce disclosure requirements for certain AI companies. They would be required to share information about how AI models work and the safeguards companies have in place to shield against misuse. “Americans deserve to know what [AI companies] are actually doing to place safety guardrails on large AI models,” Coons said in a statement. This bill is modestly focused on awareness about how AI works; other members of Congress have targeted more ambitious proposals, like all-out bans on “superintelligence” and economic plans for a new AI-enabled economy.

— Ashley Gold

Everyone wants global AI cops but the US

White House science and tech adviser Michael Kratsios dubbed his UN speech Wednesday an “intervention” against any global governance structure for AI, aligning him with Trump’s earlier remarks but pitting him directly against what AI companies (and China) said they want. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s Sam Altman told the UN Security Council that “no one person or company or country should be able to use the most powerful AI models to impose their worldview on everyone else,” while Anthropic’s Dario Amodei warned that “if managed poorly, AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole.” The CEO of Hugging Face, which was hacked by rogue OpenAI agents, cautioned against the “asymmetry of powerful AI” leaving the world vulnerable to the biggest companies’ capabilities. Their calls for global safeguards and a slowdown diverged sharply from Trump’s dismissal of AI’s existential risks as a “hoax.”

— Ashley Gold

US increases pressure on Sudan

The State Department declared this week that neither of Sudan’s two warring factions is fit to govern, sharpening Washington’s pressure campaign as its push for a ceasefire stalls, Semafor’s Lauren Morganbesser and Adrian Elimian report. The statement came after more than a year of US efforts, led by Trump’s Africa adviser Massad Boulos, to secure a temporary ceasefire in Sudan’s three-year-long war. “What the US has been doing is ratcheting up pressure very steadily on the army with the assumption that it could get the pressure high and severe enough that the army would relent and sign a deal,” said Cameron Hudson, a veteran US-Africa affairs analyst. But experts doubt Washington’s increasingly hardline approach, which is also creating distance between the US and its regional allies seeking to end the war, including Saudi Arabia.

Trump’s DC takeover, quantified

The Trump administration is reshaping Washington through more than just White House renovations and statue repairs. New polling from Gallup that quantifies the impact of Trump’s second-term federal job cuts, his immigration crackdown, and the military mobilization in the nation’s capital finds large swaths of people have been affected by these changes in the district and the broader region. Fifty-five percent of people living in the DC-Maryland-Virginia area said they’ve been negatively impacted by federal job cuts and furloughs — a number that rises when just residents of DC and the nearby Virginia suburbs of Arlington and Alexandria are considered. One-fourth of DMV residents reported being negatively impacted by federal immigration enforcement under Trump, including 43% of Hispanic residents. And 23% of people residing in the DMV said they’ve been adversely affected by increased military presence in the district, while 44% of DC residents said so.

Trump’s socialist spectacle

At some point, you get tired of trying to develop a unified theory of Trump. I gave up about halfway through his 12-minute appearance Monday with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, as the Republican president rhapsodized and the socialist mayor gazed placidly into the far distance. Political commentators used to ask what something like this was about, but the reality of this personalist presidency is that it’s a mistake to look beyond the obvious. In this case, Trump was pleased to be at Gracie Mansion, an iconic spot for New Yorkers if a totally obscure one for Americans; he likes it, as he tells anyone who will listen, when you’re nice to him, as Mamdani was; and he is interested in big construction projects in Queens. This is despite his party’s strategy, which involves linking Democrats to socialists like Mamdani.

Will you feel “relief or regret”? That’s the question Motorola Solutions CEO Greg Brown asks himself about every consequential decision. On this week’s episode of The CEO Signal, presented by PwC, Brown explains how nearly two decades of activist pressure, private-equity involvement, and asking “dumb questions” have shaped the way he leads the public safety technology company.

Brown reveals the moments when he challenged his board to fire him if they disagreed with his conviction, and other times when he decided to “check [his] ego at the door.” In a candid profile of leadership under pressure, Brown tells Andrew and Penny when he nearly quit, how to put your best people on your biggest problems, and why he thinks his most challenging investors made him a better CEO.

White House

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent “inadvertently” failed to disclose at least $100,000 of his husband’s JPMorgan stock. — Politico
• A select group of White House officials is discussing rolling back President Trump’s move to increase beef imports, following alarm from farm-state Republicans. — Politico
• White House AI adviser Ryan Baasch is decamping to the private sector.

Congress

• In a letter first reported by Semafor, Sens. Andy Kim, D-N.J., Tim Kaine, D-Va., Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., are urging President Trump to raise “China’s recent resumption of artificial island building in the South China Sea” when he meets with Xi Jinping today, Eleanor Mueller scoops.
• House Speaker Mike Johnson urged Trump to bring the Iran war to a “resolution,” while still saying the “world is safer because of” the US offensive.

Outside the Beltway

• Eight sailors assigned to the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide during the ship’s lengthy deployment amid the Iran war, according to a letter from acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao. — CNN

Campaigns

• Alaska Senate hopeful Mary Peltola is prone to “angry and profane outbursts,” staffers say. — NYT

Economy

• The Trump administration is preparing to ban diesel exports for 90 days, even as some Republican officials and lawmakers attempt to convince President Trump not to do it. — Politico

Courts

• A federal judge granted a two-week order forcing the White House to restore access to CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, arguing that the news outlets were likely to succeed in their lawsuit.