None of those, Chaney argued, allow for the governor to unilaterally deploy the National Guard across state lines, much less for “some disputed rise in ordinary street crime in D.C.”

“We are not suggesting that we are challenging just a matter of discretion,” Chaney said. “We submit that the law appropriately and constitutionally sets the outer bounds of the governor’s discretion to deploy the National Guard.”

A history of deployments

South Carolina does regularly send National Guard troops over state lines for official functions like training, affidavits from Adjutant General Robin Stillwell note.

During arguments Sept. 15, state Attorney General Alan Wilson — an active-duty National Guardsman — was notably in Virginia on a training mission, his campaign told The Post and Courier earlier in the week.

Historically, troops had regularly been dispatched for other non-emergent events over state lines, including for security during the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta or in 2012, when South Carolina National Guard troops assisted with border security in Texas.

Chaney, in his arguments, noted a line in Section 20 of the S.C. Constitution stating that armies are inherently “dangerous to liberty,” and should not be maintained without the consent of the General Assembly in efforts to avoid unilateral control by a single governor, or a single administration.

“Unchecked authority over a military to one person without any meaningful checks from the other branches of government is just not something that the framers of the state or federal constitution would ever have allowed,” Chaney told The Post and Courier in an interview after the hearing.

The practice of out-of-state deployments, Lambert said, harkens back to a principle outlined by founding father Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, one that had been practiced in state law for centuries with little pushback from the state legislature: that while states should be seen as autonomous, it was also “natural and proper” that the states would assist one another.

The poles of American politics are coming together over artificial intelligence. Left-wing socialist Bernie Sanders and right-wing strategist Steve Bannon have joined forces to push for more human control over the rapidly-evolving technology.

Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, and Bannon, a former Trump White House adviser, will both appear at the “Pro-Human Assembly” in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, alongside a diverse set of speakers, to convince Congress to work faster to curb the impact of AI.

The rare pairing of a progressive leader and a MAGA voice is a sign of how AI is upending political alliances.

The assembly – an all-day event – is organized by the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group that issued 33 principles in March to guide their pro-human movement. Those principles include that humans must remain in charge of AI, people should retain agency and liberty and AI companies should be held accountable.

The event comes at a time when concerns over the spread of data centers, the growing influence of AI and warnings from AI insiders caused leaders at Anthropic and OpenAI to call for a slow down in AI development to keep the technology under human control. At the same time, lawmakers have been urging House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to pass AI safeguards.

Johnson has said he supports some guardrails for AI, but it’s the companies, not Congress, that should be responsible for policing safety.

“We cannot put a moratorium on this because China will overlap us, and that’s the challenge,” Johnson told CNN over the weekend. “If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try to regulate AI, we will lose the race to China, and that is a threat to every single American.”

But in a nod to voter angst over AI, the House is slated to vote on legislation as early as Tuesday addressing one slice of the issue — the proliferation of data centers. The bill, known as the Ratepayer Protection Act, is designed to shield Americans from spikes in energy costs tied to the construction of data centers.

Opening statements are set to begin Tuesday morning in the federal bribery trial of D.C. Councilmember Trayon White.

White is accused of accepting $35,000 in bribes in 2024 in exchange for using his council position to influence D.C. government contracts. He has pleaded not guilty and maintains his innocence.

As of Monday evening, the case now has a jury, one day later than anticipated. It is a majority-white jury made up of five men and nine women. They will return to court Tuesday morning for opening statements.

There were about 20 to 30 supporters for White in the courtroom Monday for jury selection.

A couple of the things that came up during jury selection: prospective jurors were asked questions surrounding whether or not the jurors believe FBI agents are more or less likely to make mistakes. Another question that jurors had to answer was whether or not they believe a defendant who chooses not to testify is innocent or guilty.

There were a few jurors who were asked about what they knew about the trial or what they had seen on social media. In a recent post, White had asked Black residents to make sure that they were registered so they might be a part of the jury pool. There were a couple prospective jurors who did mention that they had heard the allegations from the U.S. attorney about possible jury tampering from that Instagram post, which has since been deleted.

One of the biggest developments to come out of Monday’s hearing, though, is one of the possible defense witnesses who will be called during the trial — former D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine. White’s lead attorney told News4 he may call Carl Racine at some time during the trial.

Racine and White have worked together on different crime fighting and youth initiatives over the years, so the context of his testimony could be the work that White has done in the community, particularly around youth offenders.

If convicted, the maximum penalty is typically 15 years, but White would not qualify for that because this would be a first offense, so it would be a lesser sentence.
He would automatically lose his seat on the D.C. Council if convicted, which would mean another special election for Ward 8.