Trump AI Summit, US Pulls Out Of Iraq, SCOTUS Third Country Deportations

0:01President Trump says artificial intelligence companies can regulate themselves. When asked if his new agreement with tech leaders is enforceable, Trump said it's morally binding. Can private companies be trusted to keep AI under control? I'm Michelle Martin. That's A. Martinez. And this is Up First from NPR News.

0:21American forces withdrew from Iraq. Iran-backed militias remain powerful in the country, and some U.S. partners say they're being left exposed. How vulnerable does that leave Iraq while the U.S. fights Iran? And the Supreme Court is letting the Trump administration go back to deporting immigrants to countries they're not from. The order is temporary, while the court considers that the policy is legal. Stay with us. We've got news you need to start your day.

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1:57President Trump says tech companies can self-regulate the risks of artificial intelligence. And he signed an executive order officially dubbing the technology superintelligence for government agencies. This came after the president met with dozens of top leaders in the AI field on Tuesday. The same day, he also rolled out an AI-driven website, america.gov, to help people navigate government services. NPR's White House correspondent, Emily Fang is with us to explain this. So Emily, what happened at this meeting? So there was no press in the meeting, but Trump came out afterwards and he told the press how people had agreed companies could self-regulate on AI.

2:32He argued if companies break the law, we have the Department of Justice or the FBI that could bring them in. Though, to put a finer point on that, if that were to happen, the U.S. would need to put AI laws on the books. And that did not happen at this lunch. Instead, Trump posted a one-page document that CEOs from six of the big AI companies that were there signed. And this agreement says companies would broadly monitor their models and make sure they do not hack into other systems. But it offered no details on how this would work. They don't want anything to go wrong. I mean, their companies are at stake.

3:05If something goes wrong, their companies are at stake. They're not going to let that happen. This is going to be all for the good. And we're going to have it be nice and safe. And they're really going to be policing each other. Asked if this was enforceable, Trump said it was, quote, morally binding. And so the question still remains whether powerful private companies can be trusted to follow through in perpetuity. But it's morally binding. That might be enough. Now, which companies were participating in this meeting? There were about 30 tech executives present. And I want to note the people who were seated right next to Trump during this meeting.

3:38There were NVIDIA's Jensen Huang, Elon Musk, and also CEOs from Meta, chip designer AMD. Their CEO, Lisa Su, is actually the only female executive invited, as well as people from Amazon and Google. And notably, there were two representatives from Anthropic at that meeting, and they included co-founder Dario Amode, who Trump does not have the best relationship with. If you remember, the Pentagon has effectively banned Anthropic. They've called it a supply chain risk, which came after the company objected to the potential use of its products for autonomous weapons. And Amode has been one of the most outspoken entrepreneurs for more AI regulation in the last couple of weeks.

4:18And he was notably excluded from a state dinner with Chinese leader Xi Jinping last week, though his competitors from OpenAI were there. And I'll note that Anthropic is a financial supporter of NPR. Now, while Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson, who was also at this meeting, spoke glowingly about this agreement afterwards, they're calling it the AI Accords now, Amode struck a more cautious note, and he suggested the mechanisms agreed upon in this document are still very much a work in progress. Listen here. The mechanism, how we address those risks is still under discussion. But we all need to work.

4:52We all need to work together to make sure that we can win and we can win safe. All right. So we mentioned this AI power tool that Trump launched. What exactly is it? It is powered by artificial intelligence companies Grok and Google's Gemini. And then Trump administration is really pushing it as an example of how AI can streamline and improve government. It's kind of like a concierge tool. You know, I tried it out. It's a chat function. You pull it up. You input questions on how to, say, renew your passport or enroll in Medicaid. You know, I was curious about whether it stores your data and whether it uses it to train the chatbot behind the tool.

5:27The model says it does not. and a senior administration official who was not authorized to speak on the record confirmed that your data is not being used to train Iraq or Gemini. All right, that's NPR's Emily Fang. Emily, thanks. Thank you.

5:48U.S. forces have left Iraq more than two decades after the invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein. Troops and equipment have already pulled out. To meet today's deadline for withdrawal, The Iraqi government has declared it Sovereignty Day. NPR's Jane Araf, who covered the war in Iraq embedded with the U.S. military, joins us from Baghdad. Jane, I mean, Sovereignty Day almost sounds like it's a festive thing. I mean, tell us what's happening there. Well, I guess we should say this isn't the first time the U.S. has withdrawn. In 2011, after a disagreement with Iraq over the status of U.S. forces here, the military left.

6:21And then they were invited back three years later to fight ISIS. and they stayed since then as part of a U.S.-led international coalition fighting the militant group. Iraqi leaders and U.S. commanders held a ceremony in Baghdad this morning. It was closed to the press, but it will be broadcast by state TV in Iraq. And Iraqi's Prime Minister, Ali Azzedi, told them that Iraq is entering a new phase, taking full responsibility for its own security. The last of the troops had pulled out before the deadline, but the U.S. military announced just this morning that they were gone. Now, we've seen the Kurdish region of Iraq been hit pretty hard in the U.S.

7:04war with Iran. What's the reaction there to the U.S. forces leaving the area? Well, there's really deep concern there. Kurdish leaders say they're being left defenseless. Iran and Iran-backed militias in Iraq have been really hitting hard a lot of the bases of armed Iranian opposition groups in the Kurdish region. as well as U.S. positions. Here in Baghdad, we went to what had been the Joint Military Command Center yesterday and found it under renovation. Every other time we've been there, there have been U.S. commanders working with Iraqi ones. From today, it's purely Iraqi. The Armed Forces spokesman, Sabah Numan, told us that the relationship with the United States will now move to more equal footing.

7:47We had a very good war together. We had a friendship. We worked together. We thanked all efforts that the coalition did in all the countries. And we will continue this relationship in another way. And he says they're now in discussions with the U.S. as well as Turkey and South Korea for things like radar systems to help counter missiles and drones. They're not a substitute, of course, for much more advanced. U.S. air defenses. Now, how are Iraqis feeling about all this? Well, the Iran-backed militias that emerged after the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein are definitely celebrating. They see this as a victory.

8:34But, you know, for most younger Iraqis, and this is a very young country, this very important development feels almost theoretical, abstract. They've never seen a soldier after U.S. forces withdrew from the cities and retreated to bases. But Iraq was occupied by the U.S. for eight years. The U.S. ran this country. At its height, there were 170 ,000 U.S. soldiers here. So now there are huge economic and some security challenges, but it's a much more stable Iraq. And a lot of Iraqis are just enjoying the holiday. They want what they've always wanted for their families. A normal, peaceful life. That's NPR's Jane Raff from Baghdad.

9:16Thank you, Jane. Thank you.

9:24The U.S. Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to resume the deportation of immigrants to countries they have no ties to. That is, for now. The order from the court wasn't signed. It did not explain the court's reasoning, but it cleared the way for third country removals while the Supreme Court prepares to hear the case. Here's NPR's Linda Kenyon to help explain this to us. So, Linda, tell us more about third-country removals. What are they exactly? Well, yeah, they are a very big piece of the Trump administration's efforts to ramp up deportations. So they allow the government to deport people whose home countries will not accept them and then send them to third-party countries.

10:01Now, the Trump administration has agreements with dozens of countries to take these immigrants to places like Mexico, Rwanda, and South Sudan. The government argues that third country deportations are, quote, an essential tool to remove certain aliens, including some of the worst criminal aliens. The Trump administration also said that the countries with which the U.S. government has made deportation deals have said they would not mistreat these migrants. The general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, James Percival, he applauded the court, saying that this was, quote, a bad day for criminal illegals and open borders activists alike.

10:41All right. So that's what the Trump administration is saying. What about immigration advocates? What are they saying? Well, they are saying that this policy causes irreparable harm to immigrants. And the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, which is representing the migrants facing deportation, says that these immigrants have, quote, faced prolonged and arbitrary detention, beatings and sexual assault and disappearance. And they also say that there is the possibility that they would be sent back to their home countries where they would face persecution. Now, I would also say that there are four unnamed immigrants who initially challenged these third party deportations.

11:18deportations. And the lead plaintiff says that he suffers from severe mental illness and fears that he will be sent to a country where he will not receive any treatment. Also, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston, he ordered a pause to the deportations earlier this year, and he said that they violate due process rights. And the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit largely upheld that ruling. Okay, so that pause on these deportations was unpaused by the Supreme Court. Yes, that's what yesterday's ruling did. But it also asked both sides to argue whether lower courts had the jurisdiction to rule on the issue and order nationwide relief from these deportations.

11:59And it also questioned whether the Trump policy is legal or whether it violated the Due Process Clause or Conventions Against Torture. It's important to note, by the way, that while the ruling was not further elaborated, the three liberal justices on the court did say they would have kept the limits on these deportations in place until the full court takes up the case. So when's the court going to look at this again? The court begins its new session in October. It will take up the full arguments in this case in December as the justices try to determine whether the deportations are legal. Previously, the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority recognized President Trump does have substantial authority over immigration policy.

12:42That's NPR's Linda Kenyon. Thank you very much. Thank you.

12:49And that's Up First for Wednesday, September 30th. I'm E. Martinez. And I'm Michelle Martin. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Rebecca Metzler, Alina Hartunian, Tina Kraja, Mohamed Elbardisi, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Zayad Butch and Ben Abrams. Our directors, Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Nisha Hainas and Patrick Murray. Our technical directors, Carly Strange. And our supervising producer is Michael Lipkin. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow.

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