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Trump Signs Executive Order Directing Fed Agencies To Integrate With New AI Powered Govt. Website; Soon: AI Leaders Meet With Trump Amid Safety, Regulation Debate; GOP Sen. Pete Ricketts Facing Challenge From Independent; Farmers Feel Impact Of Iran War With High Diesel, Fertilizer Prices; How Texas Became A Republican Midterm "Money Pit"; National Democrats Launch First Super PAC Ad In Texas. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired September 29, 2026 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[12:30:44]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Any moment, President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson will meet with AI executives at the White House as AI safety warnings and fears reach a fever pitch. Today, President Trump signed an executive order to incorporate a newly unveiled government website powered by AI called America.gov. It's supposed to make it easier to navigate government websites.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're leading now over China and everyone else and I want to keep it that way. I want to keep it that way. The only way you can keep it that way is to do exactly what we're doing right now. We don't want to stifle growth.

At the same time, we want people to behave honestly. We want them to be trustworthy. And that's why we have the DOJ. That's why we have the FBI. That's why we have forms of government that are very effective if people decide to go down a very dark and dangerous path.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: President Trump is not only embracing the AI industry, he's called warnings from the inside by scientists and executives a hoax, dismissing voter concerns.

CNN's Hadas Gold joins me now. Hadas, who is going to be at this event and what is the actual stated purpose of the meeting?

HADAS GOLD, CNN AI CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, I think this event is in direct response to this sort of summer of AI safety panic, where these conversations over the existential risk posed by AI has moved from the corners of Silicon Valley to the mainstream. We have Saturday Night Live parodying Dario Amodei and AI safety risks in its season opener. So, I mean, keep in mind, we don't need to have testing standards, national standards when it comes to AI. So in terms of when you're testing an AI model, there's no national standards that everybody follows to make sure that your AI agents don't break out of their lab and hack into another company.

And sources familiar with the meeting tell CNN that this is just an effort to get the government and the top industry officials on the same page amid these sort of increasing security concerns and these calls from the industry themselves for some sort of standards and regulations.

And we saw just on the screen just there, it's a who's who of the industry and government, from President Trump and the Vice President, the Chief of Staff, the Speaker of the House, as well as people from, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, Dario Amodei, Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos. This is -- these are really the top industry leaders of AI who have differing viewpoints on what the government should do when it comes to this regulation.

And I think what's really interesting, Dana, as we're starting to hear from Speaker Johnson, who has been so resistant to congressional oversight or Congress stepping in on regulation, but now we're starting to hear him move a little bit. He's saying that there is a way to strike a balance between some external audience and some oversight and transparency.

Take a listen to what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: Each of them have said in their own ways and their own words that, you know, they welcome oversight. And I think what's going to come out of the meeting today, I hope, is that we have an agreement of the mind, so to speak, around the table. Congress can't go in and just, you know, take a knee-jerk reaction to overregulate this because the frontier labs are ahead of where members of Congress are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOLD: So we're not expecting any sort of major policy announcement out of this meeting, not even clear if we're going to see everybody on camera together. But this is seen as a very important step and a very important signal to voters, everybody getting in the same room, at least, and talking to one another. Dana?

BASH: Yes, it sure is. It genuinely is extremely important. This is one of those things that should be apolitical since it is so existential, as people like Bill Gates have said. And clearly, Mike Johnson has been very vocal about him wanting the President to be the one to take the lead, and now that's happening.

Hadas, thank you so much for that reporting.

Coming up, Nebraska is big red country in football and politics. But this year, Republican Senator Pete Ricketts is in a serious fight to keep it that way, and he'll be here next.

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[12:38:56]

BASH: The last time Nebraska elected a Democratic senator was in 2006, when voters gave Republicans a, quote, "thumping." That was what President Bush very memorably said. Could this year be painful for the GOP again? Republican Senator Pete Ricketts is trying to fend off a challenge from Independent candidate Dan Osborn in a surprisingly competitive race.

Senator Ricketts won a special election in 2024 and is now running for a full term. We spoke with his opponent, Osborn, earlier this month. And now Senator Ricketts is here with us. Thank you so much for being here.

I do want to kind of get to this state of play that I just laid out in Nebraska. You are in a tight race against an Independent. President Trump won your state by more than 20 percentage points. Just two years ago, you won by an even wider margin. Why are you even vulnerable at all right now?

SEN. PETE RICKETTS (R-NE): One of the things that's going on in my race is that this fake Independent Dan Osborn has -- had $38 million spent on him in 2024. And while he ultimately lost that race to my senior Senator Deb Fischer, they did create an image of him being this Moderate Independent, which is absolutely not true.

[12:40:08]

And over the course of the last 15 months or so, that's what we've been pointing out with tapes that have been released. But when he thinks he's not being recorded or behind closed doors, we've been demonstrating that despite the fact he says one thing to Nebraskans about being this Moderate behind closed doors, he is anything but.

You know, he's said that he would -- publicly that he would support Trump's border wall behind closed doors. He says it's racist and that it doesn't do anything. He says he doesn't support boys and girls sports, but then behind closed doors says he will be a champion for transgender, you know, in -- transgender people in sports and abolish ICE and that sort of thing.

And then he's been caught on camera or on tape again saying that he's disparaging rural Nebraskans and saying their lives suck and so forth. So what we've been doing is really unmasking him for what he really is, and that's why we think we're making progress in this race.

Again, got to go out and earn it each and every time. I've done that in every one of my elections. And right now we're making progress on Democrat Dan Osborn.

BASH: And we had him on, as I mentioned, a few weeks ago and asked him about some of those leaked comments. But you focus a lot on him. You're the incumbent. President Trump is in office. Isn't this really a referendum on you and on the Republicans, the fact that Osborn can come as close as he had in such a red state like yours?

RICKETTS: Well, we are certainly pointing out that I've been delivering for Nebraskans for the last 12 years. As governor, we delivered some of the largest tax relief in our state's history. We did that while controlling our expenses and actually increasing our rainy day fund from about $450 million to about $1.6 billion.

We improved services along the way. And we also made some of the largest investments in law enforcement and public safety in our state's history, again, keeping people safe. And I sent the Nebraska State Patrol down to the southern border when Joe Biden opened it up. So I've got a history of delivering as Nebraskan, and we're doing it again as senator with a Working Families Tax Cut.

BASH: And you are -- despite all of that, you are up against the reality of what people in your state are facing every day. The average price of diesel in Nebraska is $6.12. I don't need to tell you how crushing that is to farmers in Nebraska. You told my colleague Manu Raju, you're hearing about the cost of living everywhere you go.

President Trump, Republicans like you, you said you'd bring costs down in 2024. What do you say to Nebraskans now when the costs are anything but down?

RICKETTS: Yes, there's no doubt that high fuel prices put a strain on the budgets for every Nebraska family. And as you mentioned, the high diesel prices are putting the same sort of budget crunch on our farmers and ranchers and making it very difficult for them at a time when commodity prices are low as well.

It just adds to the financial burden that they have. A country that chants death to America can't be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. They've killed tens of thousands of their own people. They'd kill hundreds of thousands of ours.

I think that a lot of folks understand the danger that the largest state sponsor of terrorism poses to us. They've been killing Americans for decades. And trying to make sure that they don't have the resources to do that is what the conflict in the Middle East is about right now.

So it's certainly a challenge for Nebraska families. And that's one of the things, as you mentioned, I hear about when I travel the state.

BASH: So just to put a finer point on it, the higher price of fertilizer, the higher price of fuel, including and especially diesel, which matters a lot to farmers, when the constituents that you're talking to, the voters you're talking to, come up and say, Senator, this is -- I'm really strapped here, your message to them is it's worth the sacrifice?

RICKETTS: Well, certainly, it's -- everything you mentioned with regard to the higher inputs is, again, making it challenging for our farmers and ranchers. And --

BASH: And it's directly related to the Iran war. RICKETTS: And a lot of it is related directly to what's going on in the Middle East. You're absolutely right there. One of the things we also talk about, though, is how we're looking -- I do this as governor, go on trade missions to open up markets overseas. The Working Families Tax Cut, we've doubled the amount of money for Trade Promotion Authority.

And, in fact, you can see this year we're on track to have record trade with countries like the U.K., with the E.U., with Mexico, with Canada, or South Korea, rather. So we are looking to open up those trade opportunities for our farmers and ranchers to be able to sell more of their products overseas.

BASH: OK, so you mentioned trade. I want to ask you about that. Just -- there's -- so there's one bucket of a challenge based on the President's policies. That's the Iran war. The other, of course, are tariffs. And you really vocally opposed what the President did in August, an executive order rolling back beef tariffs, because you said it would hurt farmers in your state, the same farms struggling with the high cost that we were just discussing.

[12:45:13]

Part of your argument for reelection is that you can push this President on policies that are bad for your constituents, but the President hasn't reversed himself. How do you sort of square that? Do you have sway with the President on issues that matter to Nebraskans?

RICKETTS: I engage with the White House on many different issues. This is one of them where we were talking to him about the fact that his desire to lower beef prices would actually be harmed by what he's trying to do with this, that bringing in low-quality foreign beef would actually have the impact of making it more difficult for our farmers and ranchers to expand the size of the herd, which is a long- term solution to being able to bring prices down.

And when it came to, for example, him, the White House, giving small refinery exemptions and expanding those, we were able to work with the White House to get the guarantee that those would be reallocated to the rest of the industry to make sure that our ethanol industry and our renewable diesel industry would not be harmed by that, so that would protect our corn farmers and our soybean farmers. So --

BASH: But he hasn't reversed himself on beef, which you are pushing him to do. He hasn't done it yet.

RICKETTS: We are continuing to, you know, let him know that the policy of bringing this un-tariffed, low-quality foreign beef is actually not going to help with regard to bringing prices down, and it actually does the opposite as far as harming our farmers and our ranchers. When they're trying to make the decision about holding on to that heifer for another year or two, this is actually a problem for them.

BASH: Do you want the President to campaign with you?

RICKETTS: Well, the President is going to be coming to Nebraska. We're going to welcome him there and talk about the things we've done with regard to, you know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, the things we have done for agriculture in the Working Tax Bill -- or Working Families Bill to be able to, for example, get rid of or make permanent the death tax exemption.

That really helps our farmers and ranchers a lot. Again, I mentioned the doubling of the Trade Promotion Authority, but also extending the 45C tax credits for renewable fuels. All that helps our farmers and ranchers.

BASH: Yes.

RICKETTS: So we've got a lot of good policy that we are going to talk about.

BASH: Before I let you go, since you are an incumbent senator, I want to ask about a taxpayer-funded campaign ad the White House released. It's nearly identical to a 2024 campaign video that he put out that was actually paid for not by taxpayers. Several of your Republican Senate colleagues, John Thune, John Cornyn, Thom Tillis, have said it's not appropriate to use taxpayer money for that kind of ad. Do you agree with them, or do you agree with the President that it's OK?

RICKETTS: Well, I haven't seen the ad specifically you're talking about, but again, if you're using campaign ads and using federal dollars, that would not be appropriate, but I can't speak exactly to the content of the ad you're talking about. You know, we should try and keep those things separately from, you know, the campaign dollars, and this is why we have ethics rules.

BASH: Yes. Yes, it is.

Senator Ricketts, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

RICKETTS: Oh, my pleasure. Thanks very much for having me on.

BASH: And up next, we have new CNN reporting on the staggering and growing price Republicans may pay to try to hold on to a Senate seat in Texas.

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[12:52:45]

BASH: Republicans are dominating in this year's midterm money race. They're spending gobs of money in traditional battleground states like Maine and Michigan. But the most money, by far, is going to a state that Republicans have dominated for decades.

$166 million in Texas. And that bill to defend Ken Paxton could actually double. The headline sums it up, "The Texas Senate race is quickly becoming a Republican money pit."

One of our great colleagues who is involved in that reporting is CNN's Patrick Svitek. And, Patrick, you are with us now. Also, another one of our great colleagues, Nia-Malika Henderson, is still with us.

Patrick, I'm going to start with you. And just to kind of give some illustrations of how much Texas voters are seeing ads for Ken Paxton, pro-Paxton groups, during Judge Judy, they see pro-Paxton ads, I should say, are running 750 ads. This is just in September during Judge Judy. So if you're a fan of Judge Judy, you've seen a lot of these ads.

During college football games, 1,300 pro-Paxton ads. And this is part of why $166 million is being spent.

PATRICK SVITEK, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Yes, this is part of a massive Republican effort to save Paxton in this Senate race against Democrat James Talarico. All the polls show it's a very close race, especially for a state that hasn't elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994.

It's been a very long time. And much of this latest spending has come from a group called Texas PAC, which is a group affiliated with the Senate Leadership Fund, which is the top Republican Super PAC in Senate races. It's closely aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune. It is a heavyweight player here.

And in recent weeks, they have spent well over -- spent or plan to spend well over $120 million, $150 million potentially on TV ads in the state. And so this is really a Herculean effort to try to get Paxton over the finish line in a historically red state.

[12:55:03]

BASH: Yes, and it means that even though Republicans do have gobs of money, that's money that they aren't spending elsewhere because the map is pretty big. And they're playing defense in most of those races.

The Democrats, Nia, are starting to spend in Texas from the outside. Talarico obviously has been spending, but from the outside, the Senate Majority PAC, which is the sort of national Chuck Schumer-based PAC is up with its first ad there. What does that tell you?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Listen, they see Talarico as having a chance in Texas in a way that other Democrats over these last years haven't. And partly it's because Paxton is such a terrible candidate, right? He's got a lot of baggage.

There was a focus group of Texas Republicans and they were asked to, you know, name -- you know, say a word when they heard the name Ken Paxton. Almost all of them said crook. And so the betting here is that this is sort of a perfect storm for Democrats. It's an open seat.

They've got a terrible candidate who has all sorts of baggage. But it's also just bad on the stump, right? I mean, you see him there. He's just not a very good politician.

And in Talarico, you have somebody who is fresh and young. And sure, he has some baggage around some of the things he's said, you know, the sort of culture war issues. But he seemed to sort of get past that in some ways.

The other issue here is data centers. That has really come to dominate the last stretch of this race, positioning around data centers. You've seen Abbott sort of reposition himself to be more skeptical of data centers. And Ken Paxton have to sort of have a come-to-Jesus moment as well around data centers.

So listen, I have long been skeptical of Talarico, of Democrats' chances in Texas, but the folks I talked to down there are pretty bullish on his chances. Can he get it done? You know, down the stretch, we'll see.

I think these ads usually matter around the margins, and this is going to be a marginal race. And it looks like down the stretch, Talarico will at least have some money from the national party to compete.

BASH: Yes, which wasn't entirely clear that was going to happen. I mean, just looking at the screen, $300 million is what, Patrick, you and our colleagues are reporting, is expected to be spent just from outside groups on Ken Paxton. It's just -- it's hard to even imagine that. But Texas is an expensive state, and this is a tough one for them.

Thank you both. Appreciate it.

Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after a quick break.

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