Congress

Democrats’ new year’s resolution: Reclaim upper hand on the economy and trash the ‘billionaire boys club’

Published

2 years ago

January 9, 2025

NEW YORK — The Democratic Party’s top two congressional leaders — both New Yorkers — agree: The party lost big in the election over voters’ economic fears and must now overhaul its pocketbook messaging to win again.

“Promises to help working people sound nice, but they mean nothing without real results,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in kicking off the new Congress.

“House Democrats will fight hard to protect working-class Americans and the things that matter to them, not the wealthy, the well-off and the well-connected,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries vowed in his own floor speech.

But other New York Democrats in Congress aren’t as sure.

Interviews with nearly every New York House Democrat reveal variations on where they believe their party’s push against incoming President Donald Trump should start, underscoring Jeffries’ challenge in leading a big-tent caucus that ranges from socialists to Blue Dogs. Some House members are less humbled by their party’s election drubbing than others, some blame messaging and others blame culture wars — even if the most consistent theme emerging is the urgent need to wrestle back the economic narrative from the Republicans.

The Empire State will have an outsized role in that mission with Schumer and Jeffries as the highest-ranking Democrats in Washington, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand leading the Senate Dems’ campaign arm, several House New Yorkers as ranking members and caucus chairs and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a national progressive standard-bearer. New York was one of the few bright spots in last year’s election for Democrats, too — with the party picking up three House seats there.

Some of those Democrats are now beginning to build out the case on cost of living. In the two months since Republicans won the White House, Senate and House, Trump has stacked his administration picks with at least 13 billionaires and enabled Musk to meddle with a government shutdown deal with misinformation that dismissed the tangible implications of such an action.

As the House session ended last month, Jeffries flicked at this as his Republican counterparts struggled from self-inflicted wounds, namely Trump and Musk’s 11th-hour torpedoing of a bipartisanship shutdown package and last-minute hedging from House conservatives on supporting Mike Johnson (R-La.) for speaker.

“House Democrats have successfully stopped the billionaire boys club,” the minority leader told reporters.

And while kitchen-table economics will drive the narrative for Democrats, the messaging won’t be a one-size-fits-all approach.

Several of Jeffries’ fellow members from New York say he’s granted them the latitude to approach Trump 2.0 in a way that’s best for them and their districts.

Rep. Tom Suozzi, one of 48 House Democrats who recently voted for the Laken Riley Act cracking down on illegal immigration, commended the leader as “not very heavy handed” and said he believes the border is a key starting point for his party as it prepares for Trump 2.0.

“If you want to actually do something effectively, and not just do it for political purposes … which is to secure the border, which is to fix the broken asylum system, which is to modernize the legal immigration system, you should really be doing it on a bipartisan basis,” Suozzi said in an interview.

Rep. Yvette Clarke, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, said more broadly it’s about combating misinformation: “The bottom line to it is that we have to create an ecosystem of truth.”

Still, others, including Reps. Greg Meeks, Nydia Velázquez and Pat Ryan, said in interviews that Democrats should begin with the economy.

“If there’s one takeaway, in my view, of this last set of elections, it’s us clearly reasserting we are for middle class and working-class people and against big corporations and billionaires,” Ryan, a frontline Democrat in the Hudson Valley, told Blue Light News.

In the Senate, Schumer has argued it’s Republicans — not Democrats — who are the party of the privileged as he used the waning weeks of 2024 to speedily confirm Biden-appointed judges. He led the outgoing majority in confirming 235 of them — more than any administration this century.

“For a very long time, the norm was to prioritize judicial nominees who came from a privileged pool. Most of them were prosecutors or from large, corporate law firms. Most were male, most were white,” the 74-year-old Brooklynite said in a floor speech. “But when Senate Democrats entered the majority, we cast a wider net.”

For Schumer, who was also minority leader when Trump first took office in 2017, the next task ahead will involve determining which of Trump’s Cabinet appointees Democrats should reject and confirm. He has yet to offer specifics publicly about the president-elect’s picks, but he told his majority leader replacement Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) that Democrats plan to fully vet each nominee and signaled Republicans should do the same.

The confirmation hearings set to begin this month will present the next big opportunity for Democrats to show where Republicans’ winning approach to the economy could be more perception than reality, especially because Trump has tapped several billionaires with limited qualifications to join his Cabinet.

Perhaps the biggest chance Democrats will have this year to put the GOP on the defensive about the economy will be the yearlong fight over Trump’s signature tax cuts, which expire in December. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, believes the party’s resources should be focused on that legislation.

“The starting point is the biggest proposals that Trump is going to push that showcase the difference between them and us,” Jayapal said in an interview. “So I think of the Trump tax scam as being No. 1, because I think that when you have a Cabinet full of billionaires, this is an opportunity for Democrats to show how we want the economy to work for poor people and working people.”

Newly reelected GOP Rep. Mike Lawler of New York has said he would work with Democrats, including on restoring the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, but he cautioned: “I do encourage my Democratic colleagues not to do the Resistance 2.0.”

Indeed, a full-time resistance is not Democrats’ plan. Stressing areas primed for bipartisanship, like immigration, and areas where they will stand their ground, like Medicare, is much closer to how their strategy is shaping up.

Jeffries and Schumer, who have a solid working relationship as fellow Brooklynites, albeit from different generations, were unanimously reelected as conference leaders. Jeffries is the son of a social worker and substance abuse counselor. Schumer is the son of an exterminator and homemaker. Meeks said in an interview that their backgrounds will help convince voters ahead of the midterms that Democrats understand their economic struggles “because they have lived it themselves.”

But the two New Yorkers are also members of the political establishment.

“People understand that the Democratic Party and Republican Party, a lot of them get money from a lot of the same people, and the money in our politics is corrupting,” said New York Working Families Party co-director Jasmine Gripper. “So it feels like people are fighting for the billionaires, but not fighting for the everyday voter and the everyday American.”

Despite such perceptions, Democratic Party leaders say they’re better positioned to face off against Trump than when he first occupied the White House. Jeffries has sought to underscore that his minority isn’t all that minor. The government shutdown chaos of last month proved that Johnson needs some Democrats to bail him out on key legislative fights. And Jeffries has repeatedly noted that the GOP’s five-seat advantage is far narrower than their margin of 47, when Trump took office in 2017.

“My prediction is that House Democrats under Leader Jeffries are going to be the most powerful minority that we’ve seen in recent history, because the Republican margin of control is so vanishingly small,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) said in an interview. “It is unlikely that the Republicans will be able to get anything major done without the buy-in of Leader Jeffries and House Democrats.”

Congress

Cruz says guardrails needed after dire AI warning

Published

45 minutes ago

September 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Ted Cruz said bipartisan legislation is needed to protect the world from the “catastrophic risks” of artificial intelligence.

The Texas Republican’s Wednesday comments on ABC’s “The View” come as lawmakers in both parties call for more urgent attention to AI safety regulations after a researcher who quit Anthropic on Tuesday said tech giants are “gambling with our lives.”

“I read that whole tweet thread that that developer put out. It was highly concerning,” Cruz said in the interview.

He added, “It reminded me, last year I had Elon Musk on my podcast … and one of the questions I asked him, I said, ‘OK, what are the odds that AI destroys humanity?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘10-20%,’ and I’m like, ‘holy crap.’”

As the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, Cruz holds significant influence over the fate of AI legislation.

Cruz worked with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) last year to pass the bipartisan Take it Down Act, which criminalized nonconsensual intimate imagery, including deepfakes and revenge porn created by AI. Cruz called for more legislation on Wednesday to guard against the “catastrophic risks” of artificial intelligence.

Those risks, which he said include biological and nuclear threats, should require government supervision and approval before they can be implemented. Cruz said he is currently working with Klobuchar and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to begin to address those dangers through bipartisan legislation.

“This is scary stuff, but we’re also not going to be able to stick our head in the sand and pretend technology isn’t happening. So we’ve got to put some guardrails on it,” he said.

Cruz said the likelihood of such legislation becoming law was “not clear.”

“Amy and John are negotiating right now. It is possible to move bipartisan legislation … but it ain’t easy.”

Despite his concerns about the risks of AI, he said the U.S. needs to lead the world in the technology’s development.

“One of the real challenges is [that] China is going full speed ahead, and whatever we do here, China is not going to stop,” Cruz said. “If there are going to be killer robots, I would rather they be American killer robots, rather than Chinese killer robots.”

In a social media post highlighting his remarks on the show, Cruz added: “If China leads the world in AI, the whole world is in trouble.”

Congress

Lawmakers urge Congress to act after AI researcher’s dire warning

Published

6 hours ago

September 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Lawmakers in both parties are escalating pleas for legislative action after an artificial intelligence researcher claimed late Tuesday that unchecked AI models could feasibly destroy the world by the decade’s end — and AI developers know it.

While it’s not the first time experts have warned of the existential threats posed by an unregulated industry that is rapidly advancing, it comes at a moment of heightened awareness on Capitol Hill about the need to reach consensus on AI safety legislation before it’s too late.

“The call is coming from inside the house,” Rep. Lori Trahan of Massachusetts, a House Democrat seeking to lead her party on AI policy, posted on X Wednesday. “Safety researchers are resigning, powerful AI models are breaking out of their labs, and companies are racing ahead anyway.”

She was responding to social media posts from former Anthropic AI researcher Jason Coxon, whose warnings were first reported in the Wall Street Journal.

“I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic,” said Coxon, who specialized in training models. “Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

He added: “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt.”

Adding to the alarm, Evan Hubinger, a top Anthropic scientist charged with ensuring AI aligns with human values and ethics, agreed with Coxon’s characterization of the situation.

“We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade,” he posted. “I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”

Spokespeople for OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but leaders of both companies have engaged with Congress in the not so distant past on the issue. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei made a direct plea to lawmakers to impose limits on AI development in a New York Times op-ed last year, while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has repeatedly visited congressional offices this year.

Trahan was not the only member of Congress Wednesday to join the calls for guardrails now.

Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California — a member of leadership and co-chair of an AI commission that Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries charged with formulating AI policy recommendations — called Coxon’s post “exhibit number 739 for why we need to pass the bipartisan AI Kill Switch Bill asap.”

Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida urged Congress to convene a special session on AI, asserting “not enough of Congress is focusing on this.”

“We MUST be ready,” she wrote. “This is happening whether or not we want it to.”

But lawmakers remain far apart on agreeing to any plan. Trahan continues to push for Congress to pass her bipartisan AI safety bill with Republican Rep. Jay Obernolte of California as members of both parties say it falls short.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who has often been ahead of the pack in calling for strict standards — including his latest proposal that would ban AI superintelligence — declared on social media that 81 percent of Americans believe the government is not doing enough to regulate AI.

“AI threatens our economy, privacy, democracy and the well-being of our kids,” he said. “Congress must stand up to the Big Tech oligarchs and protect the American people.

Sanders’ proposal with House Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) to ban AI superintelligence, however, was widely panned by colleagues who said barring innovation was not the answer.

Congress

Capitol agenda: Will Schumer go long for college sports?

Published

8 hours ago

September 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is about to step into a political minefield as the Senate takes up a college sports bill as soon as next week — with perhaps as many reasons for his caucus to oppose it as support it.

Senators return to Washington Monday to a three-week window for legislating before they depart until November — and internal splits on both sides of the aisle are threatening passage of legislation to impose new federal rules on an industry worth tens of billions of dollars.

Schumer must decide if he wants to steer his members toward helping Republicans reach the 60-vote threshold on what could be the sweepiest bill the chamber passes before the midterms.

Backing it would mean supporting top Commerce Democrat Maria Cantwell’s efforts in crafting the bipartisan legislation that has taken months of painstaking negotiations with her counterpart, Chair Ted Cruz. But there are also plenty of downsides to promoting the bill — which has President Donald Trump’s endorsement.

One Democratic Senate aide with knowledge of the negotiations believes there’s enough opposition within the party to tank the measure on the floor as a coalition of labor rights groups and the Congressional Black Caucus warn the bill is exploitative.

“A good number of Democratic offices aren’t eager to tick off the AFL-CIO and NAACP, screw over college athletes and deliver Trump and Senate Republicans a major political win weeks before midterms,” another Democratic Senate aide with knowledge of the negotiations said.

“Bad policy. Terrible politics,” the aide added.

An aide for Schumer Tuesday did not say whether he supports the legislation. The spokesperson said Schumer “knows Congress should act to bring clarity and certainty” to the issues addressed in the measure, and that he’s “continuing to talk to members as the bill moves toward the floor.”

But continued pushback from Democratic members like Sen. Chris Murphy and the CBC — plus several labor, civil rights and athletes organizations — have thrown into question Democrats’ support.

Murphy, who has objected to the bill’s silence on college athletes’ employee status, has led the charge against the bill, refuting several posts from Cruz on social media this week.

Still, a lobbyist working on the bill, granted anonymity to discuss the dynamics, said they “could see Schumer letting [defectors] go their own way.”

“I also suspect that [Dems’] own tallies are probably showing that they can afford votes like that,” the lobbyist said of Schumer.

Meanwhile, Republicans are still working through their own divide on the bill: concerns over whether the legislation would pre-empt states’ authority to block trans athletes from competing on women’s sports teams.

Trump last month encouraged Republicans not to stand in the way of the measure over the issue after senators like Josh Hawley and Tommy Tuberville expressed hesitation.

But even if the bill were to eke by in the Senate, a hefty amount of opposition in both parties is bound to create an uphill battle in the House, where Majority Leader Steve Scalise has been less than enthusiastic about the package.

What else we’re watching:

— GOP HOPES DALLAS ENERGIZES TRUMP FANS: Republicans are hoping the Trump-centric midterm convention kicking off in Dallas Wednesday reminds their base why they fell in love with the president in the first place. The next 48 hours are geared in part toward turning out low-propensity voters who are loyal to Trump but tend to skip midterm elections. If they turn out, it won’t be because these voters like a particular congressman but because of their affinity for the president.

— COLLINS DINGS WHITE HOUSE ON TARIFFS: Sen. Susan Collins says the White House doesn’t understand how its trade war with Canada is affecting Maine. The border-state senator facing a tough re-election bid told Blue Light News she has spoken with Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer about the escalating tariffs between the two countries and encouraged them to re-open negotiations. Collins late Tuesday applauded the Trump administration’s tariff exemptions on road salt and cement, stating they were “two products crucial to Maine that would be severely affected.”

Jacob Wendler, Alex Gangitano, Jessica Piper and Megan Messerly contributed to this report.