By MATT O’BRIEN and ALI SWENSON, Associated Press

An artificial intelligence agenda that started coalescing on the podcasts of Silicon Valley billionaires is now being forged into U.S. policy as President Donald Trump leans on the ideas of the tech figures who backed his election campaign.

Trump on Wednesday is planning to reveal an “AI Action Plan” he ordered after returning to the White House in January. He gave his tech advisers six months to come up with new AI policies after revoking President Joe Biden’s signature AI guardrails on his first day in office.

The unveiling is co-hosted by the bipartisan Hill and Valley Forum and the All-In Podcast, a business and technology show hosted by four tech investors and entrepreneurs who include Trump’s AI czar, David Sacks.

The plan and related executive orders are expected to include some familiar tech lobby pitches. That includes accelerating the sale of AI technology abroad and making it easier to construct the energy-hungry data center buildings that are needed to form and run AI products, according to a person briefed on Wednesday’s event who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

It might also include some of the AI culture war preoccupations of the circle of venture capitalists who endorsed Trump last year.

Blocking ‘woke AI’ from tech contractors

Countering the liberal bias they see in AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini has long been a rallying point for the tech industry’s loudest Trump backers.

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Sacks, a former PayPal executive and now Trump’s top AI adviser, has been criticizing “woke AI” for more than a year, fueled by Google’s February 2024 rollout of an AI image generator that, when asked to show an American Founding Father, created pictures of Black, Asian and Native American men.

“The AI’s incapable of giving you accurate answers because it’s been so programmed with diversity and inclusion,” Sacks said at the time. Google quickly fixed its tool, but the “Black George Washington” moment remained a parable for the problem of AI’s perceived political bias, taken up by X owner Elon Musk, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Vice President JD Vance and Republican lawmakers.

The administration’s latest push against “woke AI” comes a week after the Pentagon announced new $200 million contracts with four leading AI companies, including Google, to address “critical national security challenges.”

Also receiving one of the contracts was Musk’s xAI, which has been pitched as an alternative to “woke AI” companies. The company has faced its own challenges: Earlier this month, xAI had to scramble to remove posts made by its Grok chatbot that made antisemitic comments and praised Adolf Hitler.

Streamlining AI data center permits

Trump has paired AI’s need for huge amounts of electricity with his own push to tap into U.S. energy sources, including gas, coal and nuclear.

“Everything we aspire to and hope for means the demand and supply of energy in America has to go up,” said Michael Kratsios, the director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, in a video posted Tuesday.

Many tech giants are already well on their way toward building new data centers in the U.S. and around the world. OpenAI announced this week that it has switched on the first phase of a massive data center complex in Abilene, Texas, part of an Oracle-backed project known as Stargate that Trump promoted earlier this year. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and xAI also have major projects underway.

The tech industry has pushed for easier permitting rules to get their computing facilities connected to power, but the AI building boom has also contributed to spiking demand for fossil fuel production that will contribute to global warming.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday called on the world’s major tech firms to power data centers completely with renewables by 2030.

“A typical AI data center eats up as much electricity as 100,000 homes,” Guterres said. “By 2030, data centers could consume as much electricity as all of Japan does today.”

A new approach to AI exports?

It’s long been White House policy under Republican and Democratic administrations to curtail certain technology exports to China and other adversaries on national security grounds.

But much of the tech industry argued that Biden went too far at the end of his term in trying to restrict the exports of specialized AI computer chips to more than 100 other countries, including close allies.

Part of the Biden administration’s motivation was to stop China from acquiring coveted AI chips in third-party locations such as Southeast Asia or the Middle East, but critics said the measures would end up encouraging more countries to turn to China’s fast-growing AI industry instead of the U.S. as their technology supplier.

It remains to be seen how the Trump administration aims to accelerate the export of U.S.-made AI technologies while countering China’s AI ambitions. California chipmakers Nvidia and AMD both announced last week that they won approval from the Trump administration to sell to China some of their advanced computer chips used to develop artificial intelligence.

AMD CEO Lisa Su is among the guests planning to attend Trump’s event Wednesday.

Who benefits from Trump’s AI action plan

There are sharp debates on how to regulate AI, even among the influential venture capitalists who have been debating it on their favorite medium: the podcast.

While some Trump backers, particularly Andreessen, have advocated an “accelerationist” approach that aims to speed up AI advancement with minimal regulation, Sacks has described himself as taking a middle road of techno-realism.

“Technology is going to happen. Trying to stop it is like ordering the tides to stop. If we don’t do it, somebody else will,” Sacks said on the All-In podcast.

On Tuesday, 95 groups including labor unions, parent groups, environmental justice organizations and privacy advocates signed a resolution opposing Trump’s embrace of industry-driven AI policy and calling for a “People’s AI Action Plan” that would “deliver first and foremost for the American people.”

Amba Kak, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, which helped lead the effort, said the coalition expects Trump’s plan to come “straight from Big Tech’s mouth.”

“Every time we say, ‘What about our jobs, our air, water, our children?’ they’re going to say, ‘But what about China?’” she said in a call with reporters Tuesday. She said Americans should reject the White House’s argument that the industry is overregulated and fight to preserve “baseline protections for the public” as AI technology advances.

Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report.

By REBECCA BOONE, Associated Press

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A judge is expected to order Bryan Kohberger to serve four life sentences without parole this week for the brutal stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students nearly three years ago.

Wednesday’s sentencing hearing will give the families of Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen, Ethan Chapin and Kaylee Goncalves the opportunity to describe the anguish they’ve felt since their loved ones were killed in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022.

Brian Kohberger, charged in the murders of four University of Idaho students, appears at the Ada County Courthouse, Wednesday, July 2, 2025, in Boise, Idaho. (AP Photo/Kyle Green, Pool)

Kohberger was a graduate student at Washington State University when he broke into a nearby rental home through a kitchen sliding door and killed the four friends who appeared to have no connection with him.

Police initially had no suspects, and the killings terrified the normally quiet community in the small, western Idaho city of Moscow. Some students at both universities left mid-semester, taking the rest of their classes online because they felt unsafe.

But investigators had a few critical clues. A knife sheath left near Mogen’s body had a single source of male DNA on the button snap, and surveillance videos showed a white Hyundai Elantra near the rental home around the time of the murders.

Police used genetic genealogy to identify Kohberger as a possible suspect, and accessed cellphone data to pinpoint his movements the night of the killings. Online shopping records showed Kohberger had purchased a military-style knife months earlier, along with a sheath like the one at the home.

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Kohberger was arrested in Pennsylvania about six weeks after the killings. He initially stood silent when asked to enter a plea, so a judge entered a “not guilty” plea on his behalf.

Both the investigation and the court case drew widespread attention. Discussion groups proliferated online, members eagerly sharing their theories and questions about the case. Some self-styled armchair web-sleuths pointed fingers at innocent people simply because they knew the victims or lived in the same town. Misinformation spread, piling additional distress on the already-traumatized community.

As the criminal case unfolded, Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson announced that he would seek the death penalty if Kohberger was convicted. The court-defense team, led by attorney Anne Taylor, challenged the validity of the DNA evidence, unsuccessfully pushed to get theories about possible “alternate perpetrators” admitted in court, and repeatedly asked the judge to take the death penalty off of the table.

But those efforts largely failed, and the evidence against Kohberger was strong. With an August trial looming, Kohberger reached a plea deal. Prosecutors agreed to drop their efforts to get a death sentence in exchange for Kohberger’s guilty plea to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. Both sides agreed to a proposed sentence of four consecutive life sentences without parole, plus an additional 10 years for the burglary charge. Kohberger also waived his right to appeal any issues in the case.

By ANDREW DALTON, Associated Press Entertainment Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A doctor charged with giving Matthew Perry ketamine in the weeks leading up to the “Friends” star’s overdose death is expected to plead guilty Wednesday.

Dr. Salvador Plasencia would be the fourth of five people charged in connection with Perry’s death to plead guilty.

Plasencia was to have gone on trial in August until the doctor agreed last month to plead guilty to four counts of distribution of ketamine, according to the signed document filed in federal court in Los Angeles.

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He had previously pleaded not guilty, but in exchange for the guilty pleas prosecutors have agreed to drop three additional counts of distribution of ketamine and two counts of falsifying records.

Plasencia’s attorneys emphasized in an email after he reached his agreement that he “was not treating Matthew Perry at the time of his death and the ketamine that caused Mr. Perry’s death was not provided by Dr. Plasencia.”

The remaining charges can carry a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, and there is no guarantee he’ll get less, but he’s likely to. Plasencia has been free on bond since shortly after his arrest in August. He will not be sentenced until a future hearing.

The only remaining defendant who has not reached an agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office is Jasveen Sangha, who prosecutors allege is a drug dealer known as the “Ketamine Queen” and sold Perry the lethal dose. Her trial is scheduled to begin next month. She has pleaded not guilty.

According to prosecutors and co-defendants who reached their own deals, Plasencia illegally supplied Perry with a large amount of ketamine starting about a month before his death on Oct. 28, 2023.

According to a co-defendant, Plasencia in a text message called the actor a “moron” who could be exploited for money.

Perry’s personal assistant, his friend, and another doctor all agreed to plead guilty last year in exchange for their cooperation as the government sought to make their case against larger targets, Plasencia and Sangha. None have been sentenced yet.

Perry was found dead by the assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa. The medical examiner ruled that ketamine, typically used as a surgical anesthetic, was the primary cause of death.

The actor had been using the drug through his regular doctor in a legal but off-label treatment for depression, which has become increasingly common. Perry, 54, began seeking more ketamine than his doctor would give him.

Plasencia admitted in his plea agreement that another patient connected him with Perry, and that starting about a month before Perry’s death, he illegally supplied the actor with 20 vials of ketamine totaling 100 mg of the drug, along with ketamine lozenges and syringes.

He admitted to enlisting another doctor, Mark Chavez, to supply the drug for him, according to the court filings.

“I wonder how much this moron will pay,” Plasencia texted Chavez, according to Chavez’s plea agreement.

After selling the drugs to Perry for $4,500, Plasencia allegedly asked Chavez if he could keep supplying them so they could become Perry’s “go-to,” prosecutors said.

Perry struggled with addiction for years, dating back to his time on “Friends,” when he became one of the biggest stars of his generation as Chandler Bing. He starred alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004 on NBC’s megahit.

By ELAINE KURTENBACH, Associated Press Business Writer

BANGKOK (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump has announced trade deals with Japan and a handful of other Asian countries that will relieve some pressure on companies and consumers from sharply higher tariffs on their exports to the United States.

A deal with China is under negotiation, with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying an Aug. 12 deadline might be postponed again to allow more time for talks.

Steep tariffs on U.S. imports of steel and aluminum remain, however, and many other countries, including South Korea and Thailand, have yet to clinch agreements. Overall, economists say the tariffs inevitably will dent growth in Asia and the world.

The deals reached so far, ahead of Trump’s Aug. 1 deadline

Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba announced a deal Wednesday that will impose 15% tariffs on U.S. imports from Japan, down from Trump’s proposed 25% “reciprocal” tariffs.

A staff member distributes an extra edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reporting that President Donald Trump announced a trade framework with Japan on Tuesday, Wednesday, July 23, 2025, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

It was a huge relief for automakers like Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda, whose shares jumped by double digits in Tokyo. Trump also announced trade deals with the Philippines and Indonesia. After meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., Trump said the import tax on products from his country would be subject to a 19% tariff, down just 1% from the earlier threat of a 20% tariff.

Indonesia also will face a 19% tariff, down from the 32% rate Trump had recently said would apply, and it committed to eliminating nearly all of its trade barriers for imports of American goods. Earlier, Trump announced that Vietnam’s exports would face a 20% tariff, with double that rate for goods transshipped from China, though there has been no formal announcement.

Talks with China may be extended

Negotiations with China are subject to an Aug. 12 deadline, but it’s likely to be extended, Bessent told Fox Business on Tuesday. He said the two sides were due to hold another round of talks, this time in Sweden, early next week. Meanwhile, Trump said a trip to China may happen soon, hinting at efforts to stabilize U.S.-China trade relations.

A preliminary agreement announced in June paved the way for China to lift some restrictions on its exports of rare earths, minerals critical for high technology and other manufacturing. In May, the U.S. agreed to drop Trump’s 145% tariff rate on Chinese goods to 30% for 90 days, while China agreed to lower its 125% rate on U.S. goods to 10%. The reprieve allowed companies more time to rush to try to beat the potentially higher tariffs, giving a boost to Chinese exports and alleviating some of the pressure on its manufacturing sector. But prolonged uncertainty over what Trump might do has left companies wary about committing to further investment in China.

No deals yet for South Korea and other Asian countries

Pressure is mounting on some countries in Asia and elsewhere as the Aug. 1 deadline for striking deals approaches.

Supporters of the South Korean Confederation of Trade Unions march during a rally against the government’s labor policy and U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs policy on South Korea, in Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, July 19, 2025. The banner reads “We Condemn U.S. for forcing the the costs of station U.S. troops in South Korea!.”(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Trump sent letters, posted on Truth Social, outlining higher tariffs some countries will face if they fail to reach agreements. He said they’d face even higher tariffs if they retaliate by raising their own import duties. South Korea’s is set at 25%. Imports from Myanmar and Laos would be taxed at 40%, Cambodia and Thailand at 36%, Serbia and Bangladesh at 35%, South Africa and Bosnia and Herzegovina at 30% and Kazakhstan, Malaysia and Tunisia at 25%.

The status of talks with India remains unclear but progress appears to hinge on the country’s heavily protected farm sector. It faces a 26% tariff.

Nearly every country has faced a minimum 10% levy on goods entering the U.S. since April, on top of other sectoral levies.

Economists expect tariffs to sap growth even with trade deals

Even after Trump has pulled back from the harshest of his threatened tariffs, the onslaught of uncertainty and higher costs for both manufacturers and consumers has raised risks for the regional and global economy. Economists have been downgrading their estimates for growth in 2025 and beyond.

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The Asian Development Bank said Wednesday it had cut its growth estimate for economies in developing Asia and the Pacific to 4.7% in 2025 and 4.6% in 2026, down 0.2 percentage points and 0.1 percentage points.

The outlook for the region could be further dimmed by an escalation of tariffs and trade friction, it said. “Other risks include conflicts and geopolitical tensions that could disrupt global supply chains and raise energy prices,” as well as a deterioration in China’s ailing property market.

Economists at AMRO were less optimistic, expecting growth for Southeast Asia and other major economies in Asia at 3.8% in 2025 and 3.6% next year.

While countries in the region have moved to protect their economies from Trump’s trade shock, they face significant uncertainties, said AMRO’s chief economist, Dong He.

“Uneven progress in tariff negotiations and the potential expansion of tariffs to additional products could further disrupt trade activities and weigh on growth for the region,” he said.