This week, attention in Washington is focused on two major national security documents: the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) and the annual defense spending bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which passed the House and is headed for a Senate vote. The former is a high-level policy document that lays out the administration’s perspectives on U.S. national interests, threats, and priorities, setting the tone for the rest of the presidential term on great power competition, economic security, terrorism, migration, relations with allies and partners, and nonmilitary tools like sanctions and diplomacy. The latter translates those guidelines into legally binding terms to authorize and shape defense programs and set policy directives on issues like Ukraine military aid or China AI policy. The two documents can align or clash, depending on how much Congress agrees with the president’s strategy.
The current iterations of the two documents, one strategic and the other practical, differ on several important points, with their contrasting approaches to Europe being the most dramatic. The NSS portrays the region (particularly Western Europe) as facing economic decline and “civilization erasure,” and pledges to “help Europe correct its current trajectory.” It introduces a stronger expectation of NATO burden-sharing and calls for an end to NATO expansion. The document avoids direct criticism of Russia and casts the U.S. as an arbiter rather than an equal participant in allied efforts to end the war in Ukraine. By contrast, the $900 billion NDAA package includes several provisions that clearly position Russia as a threat and boost European security, such as demanding congressional approval for any further big U.S. troop reductions in Europe, providing $400 million for Ukrainian arms purchases, and allocating $175 million in security assistance to frontline NATO members Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.
Their approaches to China also differ. The NSS largely plays down ideological differences, emphasizing economic engagement and indirectly alluding to China’s unfair trade practices, supply chain threats, and encroachments into the Western Hemisphere, an area of singular importance to the administration. The NDAA takes a more traditional direction, setting new restrictions on U.S. investments in China’s advanced technology and authorizing security funding for Taiwan and the Philippines. It omits provisions that would have codified existing restrictions on chip sales to China and other adversarial nations and created rules governing the global spread of frontier-level AI, but lawmakers in both parties are already working on legislation to address those issues in 2026.
Considering the differences between the two documents, especially on Europe, it remains to be seen how the push from Congress to keep strong support for NATO, Ukraine, and close ties with European allies will balance a Trump White House that often uses those same issues to score political points at home. The future of the U.S.-Europe relationship will likely depend on whether lawmakers from both parties, career officials, and European governments can sustain day-to-day cooperation on security and economic issues despite sharper rhetoric and more confrontational moves from the administration.
AI governance, one of the few remaining bipartisan issues in Congress, is emerging as a major campaign theme ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has championed a lightly regulated, nationally uniform AI framework, using executive actions to promote innovation while discouraging states from adopting their own, often stricter, rules.
Congressional Republicans twice tried, unsuccessfully, to fold a temporary ban on new state AI laws into larger bills, exposing deep intra-party divisions over federalism and tech oversight. Democrats have generally advocated for stricter guardrails, but many of the most prominent proposals have been bipartisan, including measures to curb the use of AI in elections, protect consumer safety and data privacy, shield creative work from AI cloning, and secure the AI chip supply chain against China.
In the absence of comprehensive federal rules, states have increasingly acted as testing grounds for AI governance — much as they have in areas like food and environmental policy — producing consequential measures in Colorado, Tennessee, California, New York, and elsewhere. But a new Trump executive order, heavily lobbied for by tech companies, threatens to block future state-level AI rules, intensifying concerns about a lack of accountability for Big Tech and, more broadly, about the industry’s influence over the direction of America’s AI policy.
In the meantime, politicians, from conservative populists to establishment Democrats, are already integrating AI into campaign messaging, explicitly tying the technology, via data centers, to high energy costs, environmental strain, and job risks. Influential MAGA voices warn that AI threatens the working-class voters who brought Trump to power, while the tech elite benefits. Voters overwhelmingly voice concerns about AI-related job losses, environmental impact, and high energy demands (71%, 71%, and 61%, respectively), with Democrats more likely than Republicans or independents to be highly concerned. A plurality of Americans have little or no trust in the government’s ability to effectively regulate AI, and a full 77% believe the technology could be used to stir up political chaos. (As a case in points, research shows that AI chatbots can shift voters’ views by a substantial margin, far more than traditional political ads tend to do.) As midterm campaigning gets underway, we will be watching Big Tech super PACs, which are laying out plans to boost pro-AI candidates in an alignment with David Sacks, Trump’s top adviser on AI and crypto — turning AI policy itself into an early test of who will set the terms of the emerging AI-driven economy.
President Trump remains conflicted about adopting “affordability” as his party’s main message heading into the midterms. His administration, however, is embracing the theme by reframing recent moves to roll back climate regulations as a strategy to lower the price of consumer goods — namely, autos. The administration argues that relaxing Biden-era fuel economy standards to 34.5 miles per gallon by 2031, rather than 50.4 mpg, would save Americans $109 billion over five years and shave $1,000 off the average cost of a new car. Earlier this year, a provision in Trump’s Working Families Act eliminated penalties for manufacturers that violate Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, encouraging production of more profitable but less fuel-efficient vehicles like SUVs and pickup trucks. Another provision lets buyers deduct up to $10,000 a year of interest on loans for U.S.-built vehicles through 2028, effectively lowering financing costs. In Congress, Republican lawmakers are questioning the need for safety features such as automatic emergency braking systems, arguing they are ineffective and drive up vehicle costs.
Recent data point to a challenging environment for U.S. auto buyers, driven by a combination of surging sticker prices, higher interest rates, stretched household budgets, and the end of subsidies like Biden-era EV tax breaks. Experts warn that any upfront savings could prove short-lived as drivers spend more on gasoline and become more vulnerable to price swings at the pump. They also caution that the new Trump regulations are all but certain to face legal challenges and could be overturned by a future Democratic administration, heightening compliance uncertainty for vehicles hitting the market after 2028. Time will tell whether the rule change further slows the industry’s investments in EVs, but analysts still expect EV adoption to continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace. Reasons for optimism include new models becoming more affordable, the price gap between used EVs and gas-powered cars falling to around $900, an all-time low, and EV charging networks expanding across the nation.
