Free Republic

Graham Platner’s victory in Maine’s Democratic Senate primary was a personal triumph for the 41-year-old Marine veteran and campaign novice. His win also forces us to look at the last decade of U.S. history from a different perspective. Americans think of the years since 2015 as the Trump Era. Politics, entertainment, foreign policy, education and even sports have been defined in relation to President Trump and the MAGA movement. Tell me where you stand on Mr. Trump, and I’ll have a pretty good idea of your views on a variety of questions, from trans rights and tax cuts to national...

INTRODUCTION On April 29, 2026, Sen. Bernie Sanders convened a 75-minute panel in the US Capitol on “the existential threat of AI.” Two of the four panelists were Chinese government affiliates: Zeng Yi, Dean of the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance, and Xue Lan, a Tsinghua University professor who chairs China’s national AI governance expert committee and serves as a Counsellor of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. From a US Senate platform, Xue called the US-China AI race “an inaccurate narrative” and argued for “safe zones” of cooperation on AI safety. The event was...