Vice President JD Vance just gave a speech about AI at the AI Summit in Paris. It was his first official foreign trip as VPOTUS and his first big speech on the international stage.

Most of the headlines are about the speech's warnings against AI regulation, which is certainly one of the main thrusts of the speech, but two other facets drew our attention.

Free speech and political control. Vance warned against the use of AI to limit free speech or try to enforce political control. This is important because it draws a number of line: against safety-ist attempts to "control" and "wokify" AI in the US, against China, and especially against the EU, whose Digital Services Act, which Vance named explicitly, seeks to exert political censorship.

"Little tech and big tech on an even playing field." Yesterday, we wrote about the rising political tension between the new Silicon Valley entrants to the GOP's big tent, and the young men of the New Right who want to rein in big tent. And, during the campaign, rhetorically, the way to bridge these two constituencies was to say that the Trump Administration was anti-Big Tech, but pro-"little tech", pro the entrepreneurial innovators who are sometimes held back by tech giants with monopolies or market-dominant positions. This sounds all well and good until it cashes in as policy. We don't know what the policy is yet but the rhetoric has been recalled. Little Tech and Big Tech have to be "on an even playing field," which of course in politics could mean anything. Perhaps the only way to create an even playing field is to break up Big Tech. Or perhaps the only way to create an even playing field is to loosen a bunch of regulations (which will end up favoring Big Tech). We'll see. It's an interesting thread to follow.

Policy News You Need To Know

#SovereignIsHe — The other big JD Vance-related news this week has been about a famous tweet, outlining that judges cannot limit certain prerogatives of the executive. It has been very fun to see credentialed lawyer argue that obviously he was wrong, or that obviously he was right, with the added fun that Vance is, notoriously, himself a lawyer. The case against Vance is very simple: it's the judiciary that determines whether something is illegal or unconstitutional, and if the executive doesn't like it, they can appeal, but otherwise, they must comply. The pro-Vance case, however, has been made eloquently: by Andrew McCarthy in National Review, by Josh Hammer in UnHerd, and by Adrian Vermeule in The New Digest.

#Immigration — Migrant shelters in Tijuana feel pinch with no USAID money.

#FamilyPolicy — A new NBER paper finds that the government-backed low-downpayment mortgages introduced by FHA & VA in the 1930s and 1940s helped set the stage for the mid-20th century baby boom by making it easier for young adults to buy their own home.

#Data — Worth keeping in mind, from Brookings' Hamilton Project: Higher new Census population estimates will affect the employment report

#Reg — Good item from American Action Forum on the undoing of CFPB: the agency's unique funding stream also proved its undoing.