Trump’s AI push exposes a divide in the MAGA movement

A monthslong power struggle over the future of artificial intelligence spilled into Vice President JD Vance’s office in November, when two of President Donald Trump’s allies met face-to-face for a frank conversation.

David Sacks, the White House AI czar, had spent 2025 trying to tuck language into must-pass federal funding bills that would have wiped away state AI regulations and left Congress with limited new oversight of the powerful technology. But Mike Davis, a longtime Trump legal adviser skeptical of the president’s new tech allies, twice helped rally conservative activists and lawmakers to stop it. Trump, meanwhile, had grown publicly frustrated at the lack of progress on one of his top priorities.

In Vance’s office, Davis, known for his combative style, accused Sacks of trying to run over Congress and impose artificial intelligence on the country without sufficient safeguards, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting. Sacks countered that he was simply carrying out Trump’s desire to unleash an AI boom, and Davis was getting in the way.

Vance ultimately encouraged Sacks to work with Davis. A few weeks later, Trump signed an executive order, shaped in part by both men, that aims to block states from enforcing their own artificial intelligence regulations and directs his administration to team up with Congress to create a “single national framework” for AI. The order is widely expected to face legal challenges.

David Sacks, the White House artificial intelligence and crypto czar, speaks to the press in March. Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Mike Davis, a longtime Trump legal adviser, arrives for the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference. Jason C. Andrew/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The episode laid bare a growing fault line within Trump’s coalition over how aggressively to unleash a technology that is rapidly reshaping society and the economy. On one side are increasingly influential tech leaders and their allies.