President Donald Trump and top AI companies agree to voluntary safety measures, putting much of the responsibility on the industry itself as Democrats push for mandatory safeguards.
Plus, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans another major Pentagon shakeup, calling for a 20% cut in generals and admirals as he targets what he sees as unnecessary bureaucracy.
And former special counsel Jack Smith stands by his Trump prosecutions, telling senators he would make the same decisions again and won’t be silenced by threats of prosecution.
These stories and more highlight your Unbiased Updates for Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026.
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AI leaders agree to safety reviews, with Trump calling the voluntary agreement ‘morally binding’
Trump has a new plan to keep artificial intelligence safe, and he’s putting much of the responsibility on the companies building it.
Trump met with some of the industry’s biggest names at the White House on Tuesday and announced a new voluntary safety agreement. The companies have committed to internal controls and outside reviews as they develop more powerful AI systems.
“Well, there’s a belief that there should be tremendous self-regulation, and we automatically have regulation with the Department of Justice, the FBI, all of that,” Trump said. “But the self-regulation is very important.”
Trump said the agreement will be “morally binding” and plans to name someone to oversee it. That’s well short of the government guardrails some AI leaders and lawmakers have been calling for.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said self-policing isn’t enough. He pushed the Senate on Tuesday to require safety testing and incident reporting for the most advanced AI systems.
“Are we really going to trust the industry to self-police on something that goes beyond what is happening?” Warner said. “I’m not an AI doomer, but the ability to have these AI agents take over, shut down part of the financial system is real. We should heed the call from the experts.”
Earlier in the day, Trump also launched America.gov, a new AI-powered portal designed to give people one place to search for federal information and services.
“With America.gov, the federal government no longer stands in your way, and it stands only at your service. And that’s what we’re doing.” Trump said, “We’re simplifying it. We’re glamorizing it. We’re making it what it should be.”
Trump signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to begin integrating their public services into America.gov within 90 days. For now, the site can search government information.
The plan is to eventually let people do things like renew passports or enroll in Medicare directly through it.
OpenAI unveils ‘always-on’ AI agent
Notably missing from Trump’s meeting with top AI executives Tuesday: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Instead, Altman unveiled his company’s new “Always-on” AI agent in San Francisco.
Just a day after OpenAI held back a more advanced model over safety concerns, Altman unveiled a series of new products, including “Dots.” He described Dots as an AI helper that “always has your back,” inspired by the kind of AI we’ve seen in movies.
Dots is designed to work more proactively, handling ongoing tasks without users having to spell out every step. It will compete with other personal AI agents, including Meta’s “Muse.”
“Think about that AI from the future that you imagined,” Altman said. “It knows what’s going on. It knows what matters to you. You don’t have to tell it every little thing to do. We want AI to feel like that. We want it to feel like magical things that it just does for you without you having to ask”
He said Dots are “remarkably capable, always-on agents, built to handle really anything you can think of.”
Altman didn’t address the model OpenAI held back Monday during his keynote, but he later said the company is investing more in safety, security and monitoring as its AI agents become more capable.
Hegseth to double cuts to military’s top ranks
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will announce another round of cuts to the military’s top ranks Wednesday.
The Pentagon plans to cut 20% of the positions reserved for generals and admirals, according to multiple reports. That doubles the overall 10% reduction Hegseth ordered last year as part of his push to streamline the military’s senior ranks.
At the time, Hegseth said the cuts were needed to “drive innovation and operational excellence,” arguing that “unnecessary bureaucratic layers” were hurting the military’s effectiveness.
As of July, 851 active-duty generals and admirals served across the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Space Force.
The new cuts are expected to be completed by Jan. 1.
Hegseth is set to lay out the plan during his “State of the Force” address at 3 p.m. ET at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.
Smith defends Trump prosecutions before Senate
Former special counsel Jack Smith said he stands by the decisions he made during his investigations into Trump and would make them again.
At a contentious Senate Judiciary hearing Tuesday, Smith defended his decision to prosecute Trump, saying his team had gathered evidence “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Trump committed serious crimes. Smith also said he “will not be silenced” by threats of prosecution.
“If asked whether to prosecute a former president today, based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat. The charges against President Trump were the result of the evidence. Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions as alleged in the indictments they returned.
Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power. After leaving office in January of 2021, President Trump illegally kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago social club and repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.”
Jack Smith, former Justice Department special counsel
Republicans pressed Smith over his team’s efforts to obtain phone records from GOP lawmakers as part of the 2020 election investigation.
Smith defended the move:
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La.: “Do you believe in the tooth fairy?”
Smith: “I do not.”
Kennedy: “How about the Easter Bunny?”
Smith: “I no longer believe in the Easter Bunny.”
Kennedy: “Do you think Jimmy Hoffa died of natural causes?”
Smith: “I do not.”
Kennedy: “Now, you sought the phone records of a bunch of U.S. senators, right?”
Smith: “We sought the toll records, non-content records.”
Kennedy: “Any Democrats or just Republicans?”
Smith: “If President Trump had reached out to Democrats to further his…”
Kennedy: “I am just trying to get the facts. Were there any Democrats whose phone records were sought? Just Republicans, right?”
Smith: “The toll records that we sought were relevant to the investigation, and they were Republicans.”
Then came this exchange over a basketball game.
Missouri’s Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt suggested Smith had been in Atlanta in 2024 and raised the possibility he was there in connection with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
“What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warriors-Hawks game on February 3rd, 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair? I don’t think you know that we have this stuff. So, I’ll give you a second to process it, so you don’t perjure yourself,” Schmitt said.
But Schmitt appeared to have the wrong Hawks. Smith said he was at an Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball game that day against Maryland in Maryland, not at an Atlanta Hawks game. Records confirm the Hawkeyes played at Maryland that day.
Neither of Smith’s cases against Trump went to trial. Both were dismissed after Trump won the 2024 election, under Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.
Former ‘American Idol’ contestant convicted of murder
A jury has found a former “American Idol” singer guilty of killing his wife inside their Ohio home. It took the jury just over two hours Tuesday to convict Caleb Flynn on all nine counts, including murder, assault and evidence tampering.
Flynn broke down in tears as the judge read the verdicts, then left the courtroom in handcuffs.
Prosecutors said Flynn shot and killed his wife, Ashley, in February, then staged the scene to look like a home invasion. Flynn told police he was asleep on the couch when gunshots woke him. But prosecutors said data from his electronic devices showed he was awake and moving around the house.
Then there were the text messages. Flynn was having an affair with Alleigha Botner, who testified that he talked about hating his wife and wanting her dead.
About six months before the killing, Flynn texted her that he was trying to think of ways to kill Ashley without going to jail.
The defense argued there was no concrete evidence that Flynn fired the gun and told jurors, “Being unfaithful doesn’t equal murder.”
Flynn is set to be sentenced Monday and could spend the rest of his life in prison without parole.
“Backpack” wins fat bear week
Fat Bear Week has a new reigning champion.
Meet Bear 89 — better known as Backpack — an adult male at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. He earned that nickname as a cub, when he would climb onto his mom Holly’s back as they crossed the river. And there are some good genes there; Holly won Fat Bear Week herself in 2019.
However, Backpack had a rough start in life. At about two years old, he suffered a serious leg injury that park rangers said put his survival in question. He recovered and has since grown into a large adult known for what park officials call his “quiet toughness.”
Now, in the 12th year of Fat Bear Week, Backpack has his own title, winning the final with more than 103,000 votes.
More from Straight Arrow:
When the government uses AI to summarize public feedback, whose voice is being heard?
As the Federal Communications Commission moved to ban Chinese laboratories from testing smartphones and other consumer electronics intended for U.S. consumers, it sought public input on an initiative with national security implications.
But federal officials may never actually read the comments, government records obtained by Straight Arrow show. Instead, the officials fed the comments into an artificial intelligence chatbot that boiled down experts’ policy analyses into succinct summaries.
