Nearly two months after firing her as the nation's top law enforcement officer, President Trump has appointed former Attorney General Pam Bondi to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a move that keeps her inside the administration's orbit at a moment when internal battles over artificial intelligence policy are intensifying.
The White House confirmed the appointment, as reported by The Hill, with Vice President JD Vance issuing a statement praising Bondi's continued role. PCAST co-chair David Sacks, the former White House AI and cryptocurrency czar, announced the news on X and framed Bondi's legal background as a direct asset for the panel's regulatory work.
The appointment lands Bondi on a panel stacked with some of the most powerful names in American technology, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen all serve as advisers. Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, co-chairs the council alongside Sacks.
Bondi's path back into the administration is unusual by any measure. Trump fired her as Attorney General roughly two months ago, a decision that followed months of friction. Karl Rove, writing for Fox News, noted that Trump had criticized Bondi on Truth Social as "all talk, no action" and expressed frustration with her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and the release of related government files.
Todd Blanche stepped in as acting attorney general and can hold the post for up to 210 days, potentially through late November, past the midterm elections.
The firing triggered weeks of speculation about a broader Cabinet shake-up. Trump himself dismissed that speculation after both Bondi and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem departed.
But whatever frustrations drove the DOJ dismissal, the White House clearly sees a different use for Bondi now. Vance's statement left no ambiguity about the administration's posture:
"Pam has been an enormously valuable asset to the president's team, and I'm thrilled for her and for all of us that she's going to remain involved in confronting some of the most important issues the administration faces."
The appointment also comes as Bondi recovers from thyroid cancer treatment. Newsmax reported that she was diagnosed shortly after leaving the Department of Justice. Katie Miller, a former Trump administration official, wrote that Bondi "has been quietly kicking cancer's a** the last few weeks" and praised her resilience.
Neither the White House nor Bondi herself has publicly detailed the status of her recovery or whether it will affect her capacity to serve on the panel. Bondi did not provide a statement in connection with the PCAST announcement.
Bondi's placement on PCAST arrives at a charged moment for the administration's technology agenda. Just last week, Trump abruptly pulled a scheduled executive order on AI testing, hours before the signing ceremony was set to take place.
A draft of the directive, obtained by The Hill, showed it would have created a process for AI companies to volunteer their models for government testing for up to 90 days before public release. Trump told reporters he "didn't like certain aspects" of the order and raised concerns that it could hamper the United States in its competition with China over AI dominance.
Sacks reportedly spoke with Trump before the president shelved the order. The co-chair's public statements since then have made his position clear. In his post on X welcoming Bondi, Sacks laid out a broader philosophy:
"President Trump understands that unnecessary regulation is the biggest threat to innovation in America. Winning the AI race means not only beating China but also clearing bureaucratic hurdles thrown up by state legislatures and woke politicians in DC."
Sacks also argued that "no one is better positioned to support PCAST and to advise the president on legal and regulatory matters" than Bondi, adding he was "excited to have her on board."
The framing is telling. Sacks is not describing a panel that will push for more government oversight of artificial intelligence. He is describing one that will work to strip away barriers, from Congress, from state capitals, from the federal bureaucracy, so that American companies can move faster than their Chinese competitors.
That puts Bondi, a former state attorney general and former U.S. attorney general, in a role where her legal expertise could be deployed to identify and dismantle regulatory obstacles rather than build new enforcement frameworks. It is a fundamentally different mission than the one she held at DOJ.
Several questions remain unanswered. The White House has not specified whether Bondi holds a formal title on PCAST, such as vice-chair, or will serve as a general adviser alongside the tech executives already on the panel. Nor has the administration clarified how her legal and regulatory advisory role will differ from the work already being done by Kratsios's Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Meanwhile, Acting AG Todd Blanche has flatly denied that the Epstein files played any role in Bondi's departure from DOJ, a question that dogged the administration for weeks after the firing.
The deeper divides within the executive office over AI policy also remain only partially visible. The pulled executive order exposed a rift between those who want at least some guardrails on AI development and those who view any government testing regime as a competitive handicap. Bondi's appointment to PCAST appears to strengthen the deregulatory camp, but the administration has not publicly identified who inside the White House was pushing the testing order in the first place.
Bondi's tenure at DOJ was not without its own personnel turbulence. She was one of several high-profile departures from Trump's second-term Cabinet, a pattern that also included Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer's exit amid an inspector general probe.
There are two ways to read this appointment. One is that Trump genuinely values Bondi's legal mind and wants it applied to the thorniest regulatory questions in American technology. The other is that PCAST offers a dignified perch for a fired Cabinet member who is also battling cancer, a way to keep her close without restoring her to a position of real enforcement authority.
The truth may be both. PCAST is an advisory body, not a regulatory agency. It does not issue rules or bring cases. Its power lies in proximity to the president and in shaping the arguments that reach his desk. For Bondi, that is a far cry from running the Department of Justice. But it is also a seat at a table where Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Ellison are helping to define how the federal government treats the most consequential technology of the century.
Rove, in his Fox News column, offered a characteristically blunt assessment of the broader situation. On Bondi's firing, he wrote:
"Pam Bondi's firing was just one episode. The next act of this drama is about to begin."
He was talking about the DOJ succession fight. But the line applies just as well to the AI policy war now playing out inside the West Wing.
Washington has a long memory for people it fires and a short memory for why. What matters now is whether Bondi's new role produces results, or whether it is simply proof that in this town, no exit is ever really final.