Congress
Democrats vow payback in Senate rules fight
Senate Democrats are vowing that Republicans will face consequences over their decision to hold a vote to nix California’s emission standard waivers — even after receiving non-binding guidance from the chamber’s parliamentarian that those waivers didn’t qualify for reversal under the Congressional Review Act process.
The rhetorical warning shots come after Majority Leader John Thune announced that Republicans, after weeks of internal party deliberations, would officially move forward with floor votes on three disapproval resolutions to eliminate the Biden-era EPA waivers that effectively let California set its own emission standards.
“It’s going nuclear plain and simple, it’s overruling the parliamentarian,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters. “What goes around, comes around.”
Republicans haven’t yet outlined what procedural hurdles they will need to clear to get the resolutions to final votes of adoption on Wednesday. The Government Accountability Office concluded the waivers didn’t qualify for repeal under the CRA, which lets Congress overturn certain administration rules with a simple majority threshold in the Senate within a certain window of time. The Senate parliamentarian backed the GAO up in its findings.
But Republicans — and a handful of Democrats — are vehemently opposed to the waivers, saying they are overly burdensome and unrealistic. The House went ahead and voted to repeal the waivers with CRA resolutions in recent weeks with some Democratic support.
Democrats are warning, though, that moving forward now in repealing the waivers through the CRA in the Senate will be akin to deploying the “nuclear option,” a term both parties use for changing the Senate’s rules, and which will come back to bite Republicans when they are back in the minority.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, said Tuesday that if Republicans proceed, “they should expect that a future Democratic government will have to revisit decades worth of paltry corporate settlements, deferred prosecution agreements, and tax rulings.”
“These partisan actions cut both ways,” Wyden added.
Democrats are also privately strategizing over more immediate consequences for Republicans, though they haven’t yet specified what those would look like as they wait to see how Republicans will try to get the disapproval resolutions to final votes.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), for instance, announced Tuesday that he will slow-walk four EPA nominees and more actions could be in the offing.
“There’s a growing list of potential CRAs that we may bring, and we don’t have to wait until we’re back in the majority to bring them. There are some CRAs that we would likely bring in the coming weeks, months, if Republicans go through with this,” Padilla said in a brief interview, though he declined to talk specifically about Trump administration actions Democrats might try to undo.
Republicans, for their part, have hinted they want to keep the Senate’s focus on the role of the GAO rather than the parliamentarian, who many in the GOP ranks are wary of directly defying.
Elizabeth MacDonough, the parliamentarian, confirmed Tuesday through a GOP senator presiding over the chamber floor that she had advised leadership offices that the disapproval resolutions didn’t qualify for reversal under the CRA.
Still, Republicans have bristled over Democratic protests that they are undercutting the legislative filibuster, noting that nearly every Democrat voted during the Biden administration on an unsuccessful attempt to create a carve-out to lower the threshold for voting rights legislation.
Democrats have cast the move by Republicans to ignore the parliamentarian as a warning sign they could be willing to flout her on other things, too — like what policies can and can’t be included in the GOP’s party-line tax and spending package that could be coming over from the House as soon as this week.
“The only people who have attempted to get rid of the legislative filibuster are the Democrats,” Thune said. “Every single one of them up there that’s popping up and spotting off has voted, voted literally, to get rid of the legislative filibuster. This is a novel and narrow issue that deals with the government accountability office.”
The chair of the House Agriculture Committee said he’s not willing to “accept bad results” as a tradeoff for the benefits of advancements in artificial intelligence — a direct rebuttal to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“As someone who practiced health care for 28 years, I’m never willing to accept bad results. I think we just need to do our best,” Rep. G.T. Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, told reporters Monday.
He was responding to Altman’s comments to Decoded by Blue Light News that people “should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.”
Pressed further on whether he agreed with Altman’s premise, Thompson replied, “No, I think we have to work harder to prevent any bad things from happening.”
Altman’s comments come in the wake of increased panic over the risks of catastrophic destruction from AI, with many industry leaders and experts arguing that guardrails are needed on the technology to prevent it from spinning out of human control.
Pressure is building on Congress to regulate the rapidly-advancing technology, but lawmakers are divided over whether the AI industry needs federal regulation or if it’s capable of governing itself.
The executives of major AI labs and tech companies gathered at the White House last week to discuss solutions with President Donald Trump, who believes overregulating AI will have national security repercussions. The group ended up signing a “morally binding” AI accord that critics say won’t do enough to prevent a worst-case scenario.
Thompson noted Monday he believes that AI will bring “tremendous solutions,” specifically in regards to finding cures for health issues like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. But he also said AI has to be led with “principle” — comparing it to how he addressed digital assets in a bill to regulate the cryptocurrency industry, which he worked on as chair of the Agriculture Committee.
“The first principle is ‘do no harm.’ So we need to protect consumers, and that means, I think, building some guardrails — some guidelines — to do that,” Thompson said. He added that the second principle is to “foster innovation.”
“I think AI has a lot to do with that,” he added. “I don’t think AI works without RI: Real Intelligence.”
LE SUEUR, Minnesota — Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday there is no “consensus” yet on advancing a bill establishing permanent daylight saving time even as President Donald Trump ramps up pressure on Republicans to pass it.
Thune addressed the matter in a Monday interview after Trump used his Truth Social account multiple times over the weekend to rail against the legislation, known as the Sunshine Protection Act — going so far as to post the personal cell phone number of one of its GOP opponents, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
“The president feels strongly on it like he does a lot of issues,” he said. “It’s something we’re having conversations about but there’s no clear path forward or consensus on it yet.”
While Trump singled out Cotton for scrutiny, Thune made clear the opposition to the permanent daylight saving time proposal — which would lead to very late winter sunrises in some parts of the country — ran deeper than one senator.
Cotton has publicly voiced opposition to the proposal for year, citing, among other things, the fact that children in his state would be going to school in the dark for part of the year.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) voiced similar objections Monday to reporters in the Capitol, saying he was mindful of “safety concerns in the more northern and rural states where children get on the school bus in very early hours.”
Thune, who spoke during a campaign swing in Minnesota with GOP Senate nominee Michele Tafoya, has himself opposed previous daylight saving bills. He said Monday that “a lot of it depends on where you are in the country” and that “your geography probably has as much to do with your position on that as anything.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who has aligned himself closely with Trump, is among the lawmakers who have been pushing to get the bill through the Senate. He recently told POLITICO, “I’m going to make sure it gets passed this year.”
Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.
Democrats have pulled back some of their ads in North Carolina’s Senate race, days after the top Senate Republican super PAC paused its future spending in the state.
WinSenate, a group affiliated with the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC, has removed roughly $1.1 million in North Carolina ad buys this week, according to ad tracking firm AdImpact. The group still has roughly $18.8 million in future reservations through Election Day.
“Senate Majority PAC is committed to seeing this race through to victory, and will continue to make spending decisions based on how to best build a strong Senate majority,” Senate Majority PAC spokesperson Lauren French said in a statement.
The move, combined with the GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund’s decision to pause future spending, are a signal that both parties are shifting resources amid an ever-expanding Senate map. Democrats are increasingly confident in their North Carolina Senate nominee, Roy Cooper, as he continues to hold a sizable lead in public polling over Republican Michael Whatley — but some privately say states like Michigan and New Hampshire need more resources.
Meanwhile, multiple Republican groups, not just SLF, have retreated from the state in recent weeks, effectively deciding that it’s no longer worth the money to boost Whatley’s campaign.
The Koch-aligned Americans for Prosperity Action left North Carolina off its $22 million list of future spending across key Senate contests, and Old North Action removed $6.5 million in ad reservations last month.
The Cooper campaign, however, is still treating the race as competitive, pointing to North Carolina’s closely divided electorate and the fact that President Donald Trump won the state in each of the past three presidential elections.
“North Carolina is a truly 50/50 state and Democrats haven’t won a US Senate race in 18 years. We can’t take anything for granted or our eye off the ball,” said Morgan Jackson, a senior adviser to the Cooper campaign. “DC is broken and we’re going to continue to run this race like we’re ten points down to ensure North Carolinians get the change they desperately need.”
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