And panicking with good reason

Remember my annual Politico “black swan” prediction, published January 2, 2026?

Trump himself hasn’t entirely bolted — yet — but he’s certainly changed course sharply, moving from full anti AI regulation to strongly encouraging the voluntary preflight testing of frontier AI models.

Axios just reported this:

A new Super PAC called Guardrails Alliance, just put out a statement from their Political Director Charlie Blaettler which sums it up:

The Republican Party is panicking because they sold out to the AI industry – a while ago – and they know it. But now they are realizing how wildly unpopular Big AI’s agenda is with the American people. Now the GOP and AI’s unaccountable billionaires are scrambling to backtrack …

How they can backtrack is not entirely obvious. And of course to be fair some prominent Republicans like Hawley, Bannon, DeSantis and Blackburn have already made it clear that they are hardly fans of the AI industry in its current form. But the party is definitely in a pickle. And it will be interesting to see the degree to which Trump himself might further retrench, once he’s fully apprehended the writing that is now so clearly on the wall.