Congress
AOC endorses El-Sayed in Michigan Senate race
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) endorsed Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign for Michigan’s open Senate seat on Thursday, a decision that comes as progressives look to capitalize off a series of recent high-profile primary victories in New York, Colorado and elsewhere.
Her endorsement could provide El-Sayed with a critical boost just over a month before the state’s Aug. 4 primary. The former public health official is locked in a heated contest against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow for the right to take on Republican Mike Rogers in the general election.
It also comes as El-Sayed has risen to the top of the pack in recent public polling.
Virtually any Democratic path to flipping the Senate in this year’s midterms would see the party hold the open Michigan Senate seat, with two-term Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) retiring at the end of his term.
The race has emerged as perhaps the largest battleground over the ideological future of the party. El-Sayed, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2018, has collected endorsements from progressives, while Stevens has the tacit backing of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, with AIPAC also boosting her candidacy.
El-Sayed, Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview with The New York Times, is her party’s best chance.
“Despite our ideological differences and whatever disagreements there are in the party, every single one of us sees this moment as existential,” she said. “And I think many people are willing to put aside differences in order to give us the best chance at winning. And I think that Abdul gives us that right now.”
Senate Republicans are discussing whether to stay in town next week to vote on a data center bill being championed by one of their most vulnerable incumbents, according to two GOP senators granted anonymity to disclose private talks.
Republicans haven’t made a decision — and lawmakers said they were given no concrete guidance on their schedule during a closed-door lunch with party leaders Wednesday. But the fact that some are weighing whether to remain in session so close to the midterms against sending members home early to campaign signals a growing anxiety over affordability-related issues ahead of Election Day.
Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio), who is fending off a competitive challenge from former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, tried last week to clear a House-passed bill aimed at getting tech companies to cover the energy costs associated with data centers — an issue that has overtaken his Senate race.
But Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, the top Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, blocked Husted’s effort to pass the bill quickly via a unanimous consent agreement, arguing the measure doesn’t go far enough to protect consumers.
That means GOP leaders would need to jump through days of procedural hoops in order to get even an initial vote on the bill.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also indicated Wednesday that he would urge his colleagues not to support the legislation at this time, instead touting another Democratic bill that would put more enforcement mechanisms in place.
“Senator Husted’s bill is a fraud. It’s voluntary, no company has to do it,” he told reporters during his weekly news conference. “The bill we have is mandatory. It is much stronger and it is what is needed.”
The House version of Husted’s bill passed in the House with overwhelming bipartisan support earlier this month.
Senate Republicans are also still waiting to see if a long-sought deal to overhaul the energy permitting process comes together. If an agreement can be reached soon, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has indicated that the chamber would stay in town next week to process that bill, giving lawmakers more time to take up the Ratepayer Protection Act as well.
Calen Razor contributed to this report.
Congress
Mike Collins memo identifies 1 in 10 Georgia voters who should be voting for him — but are ‘up for grabs’
One in 10 Georgia voters aren’t sold on Mike Collins for Senate — even though those same voters backed President Donald Trump in 2024, according to a new memo from Collins’ campaign.
The finding comes as public polling continues to show Collins trailing Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in the premier battleground state. A YouGov poll released Wednesday found Ossoff up by 10 percentage points over Collins.
The memo identifies the “up for grabs” voters as Republicans and conservative-leaning independents who also plan to vote for the state’s GOP gubernatorial candidate, Rick Jackson, and could decide the election.
“They should be voting for Mike Collins, and they are not yet, mainly because they do not have a firm opinion of him,” the memo reads. “Most of them cannot tell you anything about him, and a third have never seen an ad about him.”
Collins’ campaign has been working to convince GOP leaders and outside groups that he can narrow Ossoff’s polling advantage, as the party weighs how best to allocate its resources in the closing stretch of the election.
For now, top Republicans have appeared to deprioritize the Georgia Senate race as a top pickup opportunity — as other battleground states come more into view — but Senate Majority Leader John Thune is planning to attend a fundraiser for Collins alongside Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday to shore up support.
The campaign memo makes the case that Collins does not need to build a new GOP coalition to close the gap but instead focus on the existing Republican coalition in the state that it identifies as still up for grabs for him.
Two-thirds of those voters live in the Atlanta media market, according to the memo, followed by Macon and Augusta.
“Streaming is how a plurality get live television,” the memo reads. “They are seeing fewer political ads than everyone else, so they need to see these messages more often, and they need to keep seeing them all the way through November 3.”
The overriding issue for these voters, according to the memo, is the cost of living. “Nothing else is close,” it says. The memo argues that the campaign’s closing message should introduce Collins by emphasizing his Georgia roots and business background while attacking Ossoff over taxes and other elements of his record.
“Every Georgian needs to understand how Jon Ossoff failed them by making their lives less safe and less affordable while aligning himself with far-left socialists who proclaim that ‘America deserved 9/11,’” Collins spokesperson Meyer Siegfried said in a statement.
Two top congressional progressives unveiled their bill Wednesday to ban artificial “superintelligence” and establish a Cabinet-level agency to regulate AI, fleshing out their plans for a crackdown on the industry.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) have advocated for heavy regulation of the rapidly evolving technology, particularly following a string of high-profile cyberattacks and doomsday warnings from industry insiders. Sanders and Casar teased the proposal earlier this month but only officially rolled out their “Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act” on Wednesday.
Casar said the bill would ban “recursive self-improvement,” meaning AI’s ability to build improved and more capable versions of itself. The bill also bars AI models from designing nuclear or biological weapons and would ban models that try to “escape human oversight or deceive humans,” Casar told reporters.
Sanders and Casar had previously outlined their plans to draft legislation banning “superintelligence” and to pause advanced AI development until a “Department of Artificial Intelligence” with a Senate-confirmed secretary is capable of monitoring model capabilities and identifying risks.
The legislation would set penalties for any entity that attempts to circumvent federal oversight, including the “corporate death penalty” for companies and up to 20 years in prison for individuals — on par with the punishment for illegally developing nuclear weapons.
The duo is bullish about both chambers swiftly taking up their legislation, even as Democratic leaders entertain much smaller-bore regulatory actions and some Republican leaders reject the need to advance AI safety legislation entirely. Casar said he believed the bill “will be considered the commonsense proposal in the coming weeks” as public pressure on Congress to enact AI guardrails mounts.
“In my view, we cannot simply sit by idly and wait for advanced AI to cause the next 9/11 or Chernobyl or a global pandemic or a financial crisis before we take action to protect the American people and, of course, the people of the world,” Sanders told reporters.
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