Welcome to From the Politics Desk, a daily newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
In today’s edition, Jonathan Allen explores how presidential contenders from both parties will need to grapple with ever-shifting AI issues ahead of 2028. Plus, Peter Nicholas spoke with more than a dozen Iowa farmers about the state of the economy and their views of President Donald Trump.
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— Adam Wollner
Unfortunately for White House hopefuls, no algorithm can predict all the permutations of AI that will emerge between now and the 2028 election — much less how voters will respond to each of them.
Technology is advancing faster than policy can be developed, and AI promises to be a divisive marquee issue. Because it has such large-scale implications for the economy, national security and individual liberty, it may be the most consequential topic facing presidential contenders, both in the primaries and the general election.
A candidate’s ability to adapt on the fly to significant, fast-moving blips on the electorate’s radar is a major tell for how they might deal with crises as president. That’s why serious candidates will need to start building easy-to-understand frameworks for their approaches to AI.
They’ll have to tell voters not only where they generally stand, but whether each new advance in technology and each new policy proposal fits with their plan or not. And they will have to pick carefully which aspects of AI — good and bad — they want to emphasize.
The sea of options is endless: data centers, cyberwarfare, actual war, sexual exploitation, disinformation and so-called frontier technology that scares even some of its developers in the potential of machines to unleash catastrophes on humanity. The list goes on.
Right now, the leading 2028 hopefuls are just touching the tip of the iceberg.
“As AI transforms the battlefield — in some ways positively, in some ways not — I ask that you be jealous and selfish about your role as the decision-maker in warfare,” Vice President JD Vance told the graduating class at the Air Force Academy today.
“Use technology to make you better, but never submit to it,” he added. “You are the masters of warfare. And both your minds, but also your hearts, are the opposite of artificial.”
Vance is close to the Republican-oriented tech titans in Silicon Valley. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a longtime favorite of Democratic-leaning industry leaders, has also recently shifted into a more populist and humanist stance on AI.
“I have never seen an issue move as quickly as AI, and it’s not even close,” Jason Elliott, a former deputy chief of staff for Newsom, told NBC News this week. “So every elected official’s position naturally should be evolving on AI from week to week and month to month, because the underlying technology itself seems to change every day.”
Public opinion is moving, too. Polls show that Americans are increasingly concerned about the downsides of AI.
It’s impossible to know whether sentiments will continue to move in that direction or reverse course — and events may well dictate the direction and speed. But presidential candidates won’t have the luxury of waiting to find out. They might not be able to match the speed of AI, but they would be wise to move as fast as humanly possible.
Nancy Pelosi did not plan to endorse anyone in the race to succeed her in Congress. But after noting how many women who used to represent California have been replaced by men, the former speaker felt she had to step in for San Francisco supervisor Connie Chan, she told NBC News in an exclusive interview.
➡️ More for subscribers: How JD and Usha Vance ‘embrace the chaos’ of a growing family, by Monica Alba and Henry J. Gomez
GALT, Iowa — Two days after President Donald Trump ordered an attack on Iran, Iowa farmer Mark Mueller got a worrying message from a supplier: The price of his fertilizer had jumped from $795 per ton to $850.
The war had shut down the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting shipments of the fertilizer, which is the biggest expense on Mueller’s corn and soybean farm in northeast Iowa. He hopes one day to pass the asset to his two adult daughters so they will have some “security in their old age.” On March 6, the supplier called again: Now the price was $950 a ton. Two weeks later, the price jumped to $1,050, nearly one-third higher than when the war began.
“Scary,” said Steve Rehder, 62, a family farmer in northwest Iowa, when he was asked to assess the overall farm economy.
“Volatile,” said Jason Orr, a farmer in northeastern Iowa who serves on the state’s Corn Promotion Board, when he was asked the question.
“Miserable,” said Lance Lillibridge, 56, who farms corn and raises cattle in eastern Iowa.
Farmers like these have long been a pillar of Trump’s electoral base. When he won in 2024, he carried the rural vote by 40 percentage points, surpassing his margin in his previous two elections.
Trump isn’t on the ballot, but he has a lot to lose if his party falters in the midterm elections in November, when Iowa is hosting key races for Senate, House and governor.
Interviews with 13 Iowa farmers in the last week show that they’re burdened by rising costs, along with fluctuating prices they can’t control. Eleven voted for Trump in past elections. Mueller describes himself as a “pro-business Republican” and declined to say whether he backed Trump.
Stu Swanson, who raises corn and soybeans in Galt, said he voted for Trump in the first two general elections and wrote in Nikki Haley’s name in 2024.
Most said they have faith in Trump and his judgment but worry that operating margins are so tight that they’re hovering precariously between profitability and ruin.
📉Related: Key inflation gauge worsens as Americans’ incomes and spending power erode
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner.
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