Congress
Charges dropped for Booker staffer who brought gun into Capitol without a license
A staffer for Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) who was arrested in the Capitol last year for carrying a pistol without a license had his charges quickly dropped, according to the Justice Department.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia decided not to prosecute the staffer, Kevin Batts, in April 2025 after it received documentation from Batts showing that his “New Jersey retired law enforcement carry permit was active,” Timothy Lauer, a spokesperson for the office, said in a statement Thursday. Batts had been arrested about two weeks prior.
Batts is a retired Newark police detective who currently serves as a special assistant to Booker. The senator’s office said last year that he serves as a driver for Booker. Batts set up a legal expense fund and received $6,000 from donors, according to filings reviewed by Blue Light News.
At the time of Batts’ arrest, U.S. Capitol Police noted: “All weapons are prohibited from Capitol Grounds, even if you are a retired law enforcement officer, or have a permit to carry in another state or the District of Columbia.”
Batts was apprehended on the Senate side of the Capitol in March 2025 after he informed Capitol Police he was armed. Members of Congress are not typically subject to security screenings when entering the Capitol complex, and staff are often able to bypass security when accompanied by the members who employ them.
A Capitol Police spokesperson said the department “arrested Mr. Batts on March 31, 2025, for Carrying a Pistol Without a License (Outside Home or Place of Business), Unlawful Activities, Possession of Unregistered Firearm, and Possession of Unregistered Ammunition.” When asked separately what became of those latter three charges, the U.S. attorney’s office referred to their previous statement regarding Batts’ carry permit.
Batts established his legal expense fund in 2025 to pay for costs associated with his criminal arrest related to his official Senate duties, according to the filing.
He received two contributions: $5,000 from Elizabeth Naftali of Studio City, California, and $1,000 from Patrick Dunican Jr., of Ridgewood, New Jersey. Naftali is a prominent Democratic Party donor who has contributed to Booker’s campaigns in the past. She has also purchased artwork from Hunter Biden, the former president’s son. Dunican declined to comment; Naftali did not respond to a request for comment.
David Bergstein, a spokesperson for Booker, said in a statement that “the case was quickly dropped last year, and this fund follows standard Senate Ethics Committee rules to help pay for former Detective Batts’s legal bills associated with the investigation.“ Bergstein did not respond to a request to speak with Batts.
Typically, legal expense funds have been established by lawmakers in legal trouble, like former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and former Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.). It’s rare for staffers to set them up.
In 2021, a House staffer brought an unregistered gun through security in a House office building but faced steeper consequences.
In that instance, Capitol Police missed a loaded Glock 9mm handgun as it passed through an X-ray screening machine at the Longworth House Office Building. The building was placed on lockdown until the staffer, Jeffrey Allsbrooks, came back to the screening area to have the gun inspected. Allsbrooks said he “forgot the gun was in the bag.” Ultimately, he agreed to a plea deal.
James Talarico is planning to counterprogram President Donald Trump’s GOP midterms convention in Dallas with a focus on affordability.
The idea from the Texas Democratic Senate candidate and seminarian: host a statewide “Love Thy Neighbor” food drive to offer a contrast with Republicans coming to town and highlight the high cost of groceries, according to plans shared first with Blue Light News.
“Next week, billionaire mega-donors and their puppet politicians will gather at a convention in Dallas to clink champagne glasses and toast their own corruption. They’re paying $20,000 for entry to a Billionaire Ball celebrating corrupt tariffs, billionaire tax breaks, and a new forever war that are all driving grocery costs through the roof,” Talarico said in a statement to Blue Light News. “We’ll be doing something different. We’re bringing Republicans, Democrats, and Independents together to collect groceries for our neighbors who have been screwed over by corrupt politicians.”
The campaign said it will “mobilize volunteers to collect, sort, and donate groceries for middle class Texans struggling with the high price of groceries.” The event will last from Sunday, Sept. 6 through Wednesday, Sept. 9 — the same day the GOP convention kicks off.
Talarico is also expected to field media interviews in a large warehouse near the convention.
“Texans across the political spectrum will come together to build community, show up for their neighbors, and take power back for working people,” the campaign said in a statement.
A recent poll conducted by Texas Public Opinion Research poll released last week showed Talarico leading ,his opponent Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, 48 percent to 42 percent.
Trump this week said he would campaign for Paxton soon.
Congress
‘I don’t think anyone is really comfortable’: Democrat leading on AI raises alarms at Trump, Zuckerberg call
A House Democrat trying to lead her party on artificial intelligence policy sent a warning shot Friday to tech CEOs trying to undermine efforts to regulate the fast-growing technology.
In an interview, Rep. Lori Trahan raised alarm bells over a POLITICO report detailing attempts by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to personally discourage President Donald Trump from moving ahead with plans to establish an independent AI regulator modeled after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA.
“I don’t think anyone is really comfortable when they see tech executives who are sitting on the stage at the president’s inauguration, and have had to pay millions of dollars to this fund and that fund, calling the shots,” said the Massachusetts Democrat.
Allowing Zuckerberg to call the shots on the proposed AI commission would be tantamount to “a complete abdication of Congress,” Trahan continued. She also suggested would use her perch on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to work with other Democrats to haul in industry executives like Zuckerberg to testify, should Democrats win back the House majority in the midterms.
“Congress’ job is to do oversight and to have those hearings,” she said. “And I think we would learn a lot from those hearings so that we can put pen to paper on thoughtful proposals. So yes, there have been a number of people, myself included, who have called for those hearings, and I think we’re going to continue to do that.”
Trahan is poised to be a major player in the coming weeks and months when it comes to AI, especially if Democrats prevail in the November elections and are forced to solidify a position on the subject; the party is currently all over the map.
Unlike other Democrats who have retreated to their corners to work on partisan proposals, Trahan has gone out on a limb by crossing the aisle to broker a deal on a bipartisan AI safety bill with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) — a package that was originally met with disdain by members of both parties.
She announced this week she would opt out of a run for a place in House Democratic leadership after being widely expected to make a play in the next Congress — in part, she said, to continue working on AI issues.
But Trahan’s comments Friday illustrate the deep distrust among Democrats, herself included, over the GOP approach to AI regulation — from Republicans waffling on whether they support the proliferation of data centers to Trump’s recent call with Zuckerberg.
Her calls are consistent with left-leaning members like Rep. Greg Casar, a Texas Democrat and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who has been at the forefront of the most aggressive proposals to crack down on top tech companies.
“The CEOs of Anthropic and OpenAI say that cutting edge AI could be as dangerous as nuclear weapons,” Casar said Thursday on X in response to the Blue Light News report. “But Trump is conspiring with billionaires for this technology to be regulated like … Hollywood movies.”
Trahan said Friday that “reasonable people can disagree on what regulatory construct we come up with” governing development and use of AI.
But, she added, “what I don’t think the American people agree with is that Mark Zuckerberg and President Trump are going to figure that out on a phone call.”
House Democrats’ top election leader has a message for states ahead of the midterms: count faster.
“We are, I think, nicely trying to encourage people to do their balloting as quickly as possible, and that means hiring additional staff so that it doesn’t call into question results,” Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, said in a Thursday interview with Blue Light News.
The advice is just one part of Morelle’s efforts to secure the midterm elections. He said Democrats have wargamed over 150 scenarios of how the Trump administration could attempt to interfere or complicate the November elections and its certification. He is encouraging states to have a “degree of urgency” when counting ballots to stave off Republican-led conspiracy theories about the reasons for delays.
Morelle said he is leaning on states to staff up on election officials to facilitate speedy ballot counting while emphasizing the process should still be “done properly,” “fairly” and that “we don’t want people with cast ballots not to have their ballots counted.” He is going to Los Angeles next week to deliver that message and meet with election security experts and election administrators — though he did not specify whom he is meeting with or where.
“We are trying to gently encourage people to staff up,” he said. Morelle added that if Democrats take the House majority, they’d “push for more resources for local and state administrators so they can hire additional capacity.”
Morelle has other big plans in the majority, including cracking down on dark money in politics, protecting voting rights and most notably, working on a bipartisan voter identification bill.
Asked whether he could accept some form of voter identification as part of a larger bipartisan elections package, Morelle said, “I’m personally not opposed to some form of voter ID,” adding that he has opposed multiple Republican-led proposals to tighten up identification requirements.
“I don’t know where my colleagues on the Democrat side will be, but I think voters think, ‘Okay, you show your ID for just tons of things. Is it really that much of a burden?’” he said. “And if it is, we’ll get state issued IDs or federally issued IDs to people who can’t afford it. So I do think that there’s hope for a bipartisan way forward, and I’ll be anxious to work with colleagues to do it.”
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