The Senate’s top cybersecurity official is aiming to expand the number of AI licenses and approved AI tools available to Senate staff — and it will come with a price tag.

The Senate sergeant at arms, the chief law enforcement official on Capitol Hill whose office also manages IT and logistics, is seeking a $2.8 million boost for the department’s fiscal 2027 budget for AI licenses as appetite grows in Congress for using large language models in day-to-day workflow.

“About 10 percent of Senate users have already used the free, unsupported version of this technology,” Senate Sergeant at Arms Jennifer Hemingway told the Senate Appropriations Legislative Branch subcommittee Wednesday. “Moving those users and other Senate users into Senate-supported versions of these platforms is necessary to protect Senate data.”

In March, the Senate green-lighted the use of Google’s Gemini chat, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot in Senate offices with licenses that support enhanced data security measures compared with the free versions. Staff in the House have been using Copilot, Gemini and ChatGPT, as well as Anthropic’s Claude, approved platforms under the chamber’s internal AI guidelines.

The cybersecurity team in Hemingway’s office is currently conducting risk assessments on about 40 AI tools, she told lawmakers. The sergeant at arms plans to bring recommendations for AI tools for Senate use to the bipartisan AI Governance Board, and “if the AI products meet our defined criteria,” make more tools available to the Senate.

“The most popular on that list is Claude,” Hemingway noted. The sergeant at arms began assessing the Anthropic product March 3.

When pressed by ranking member Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) about the sergeant at arms’ policy of issuing one license per Senate user, Hemingway explained that the protocol is designed in part to incentivize staff to use data-protected versions approved by the sergeant at arms.

“If there is demand to have more than once license per user, we’d be happy to have conversations” with the Legislative Branch panel that funds the sergeant at arms, Hemingway said, calling it a “resource issue.”

She added that staff whose work focuses on AI and who need access to multiple tools could be accommodated very quickly.

In the more than three years since he became the top House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries has sometimes struggled to escape the shadow of his esteemed predecessor.

He stood alone in the limelight Wednesday, however, after engineering a feat of political hardball — a statewide vote paving the way for new Virginia congressional maps that could wipe out four GOP-held seats — that earned praise from Nancy Pelosi herself.

“I’m very proud,” the former speaker said in an interview, adding Jeffries has handled redistricting “fabulously.”

Tuesday’s vote was the culmination of months of lobbying from Jeffries to counter the mid-decade redistricting push launched by Trump and his allies in Texas. He barnstormed the country, pressing Democratic state legislators to match the GOP blow-for-blow.

Not all of his entreaties were successful, but he found partners in the Virginia state house who were willing to tee up a plan that would turn the Commonwealth’s 6-5 Democratic map into a 10-1 advantage. Jeffries backed the effort with $38 million in funding from a leadership-aligned group, House Majority Forward — the biggest single expenditure in the fight.

“Donald Trump and Republicans launched this gerrymandering war,” Jeffries told reporters Wednesday. “And we’ve made clear as Democrats that we’re going to finish it.”

Now that his bet has paid off, Jeffries has concrete proof of his political savvy — and muscle — as he moves to secure the speaker’s gavel in November.

That could help quiet concerns from some Democrats about whether the infamously careful Jeffries is the man for a moment when Trump is pulling every possible lever of his power to gain advantage for the GOP.

His allies say he has now proven he can match the Trump administration stride for stride in strategy and rhetoric.

“He did a damn good job, and we got it,” Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan said in an interview. “And if people are going to screw around, we’re not afraid to push back.”

Jeffries showed some swagger in the immediate aftermath Wednesday. During a morning news conference, he employed language more befitting of a battlefield than Capitol Hill.

Flanked by other top party leaders, he called DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene of Washington a “field general.” He said Democrats would “continue to fight one battle after another.” And Jeffries warned Republicans in Florida that if they embark on their own redistricting scheme, they will “F around and find out.”

Jeffries’ other favorite slogan of late is a direct jab at Trump: “Maximum warfare. Everywhere. All the time” — a quote from an August New York Times article attributed to a person close to the president describing the MAGA approach to redistricting.

The aggressive approach is not only aimed at Republicans, however, but at doubters in his own party who have compared him unfavorably to Pelosi — who spent the final four years of her speakership in daily battles with Trump, often getting the best of the president.

For better or worse, Jeffries is nowhere as well-known as Pelosi was at the height of her power. About a quarter of Americans polled last month by BLN had no idea who Jeffries is — significantly trailing his Senate counterpart Chuck Schumer in name recognition. And those who do know him haven’t been especially impressed, even inside his own party: A November YouGov poll — taken shortly after the end of a record government shutdown — found that 23 percent of Democrats held an unfavorable view of the House minority leader.

But members of his caucus — who have been eager to aggressively counter GOP power grabs in the post-Pelosi era — showered their leader with praise Wednesday.

“Those of us who’ve been here with him over his career never had even a moment of regret,” Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who is being targeted in a GOP-led redistricting effort in Missouri, said in an interview. “And he is going to lead us out of the wilderness, and I look forward to him becoming a speaker.”

Still, some in his caucus and on the campaign trail to join it — mainly on the progressive wing — have openly called on Jeffries to do more to counter Trump and Capitol Hill Republicans. That sentiment has not entirely faded.

“I think every leader should always be doing more,” Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) said in an interview. “And he hears me say this all the time.”

In response to the demands, Jeffries pointed to the ousters of “toxic” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi in a brief interview as proof that Democratic lawmakers were getting results. Jeffries has also found major success using discharge petitions and other unorthodox legislative maneuvers to commandeer the House agenda from Speaker Mike Johnson.

“We’re going to continue to push back aggressively against the Trump administration,” he said. “There’s certainly more work to be done in that regard, and we’re continuing to lean in.”

Ramirez conceded that the redistricting wins have gone some way to proving his abilities as a party leader.

“Yesterday was a good step forward for him,” she said.

Progressives might still seek to mount an alternative to Jeffries if Democrats can retake the House majority in November. But most members of the caucus are mostly relieved that, with the four new Virginia seats in hand, they appear to have successfully parried the GOP redraw effort.

“I hope it means we have a greater likelihood of Speaker Jeffries,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said of the vote in his home state. “A strong leader with a clear agenda for the American people.”

Members on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are divided over whether President Donald Trump should pardon Jeffrey Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for her cooperation in the panel’s Epstein investigation, chair James Comer said in an interview Wednesday.

Maxwell, who was deposed by the Oversight Committee as the sole convicted accomplice in the Epstein sex trafficking scheme, previously invoked her Fifth Amendment right in declining to answer the panel’s questions. Her lawyer has said that she would only speak if granted clemency — a power available solely to Trump, who has not ruled out the prospect of a pardon.

When asked whether he believed it was a favorable deal to issue a pardon in return for Maxwell’s testimony, Comer said, “A lot of people do.”

“My committee’s split on that,” he added, declining to name who on the panel supported granting a pardon. “I don’t speak for my committee.”

Comer himself wasn’t in favor. “I think it looks bad,” he said. “Honestly, other than Epstein, the worst person in this whole investigation is Maxwell.”

Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the Oversight panel’s top Democrat, emphasized that Committee Democrats unanimously opposed a pardon for Maxwell.

“That would be a huge step backwards, and, quite frankly, so disrespectful to the survivors,” he said in an interview. “She is a known abuser. She is a known liar.”

“If the DOJ or Oversight Republicans are out there trying to negotiate some sort of pardon that is … not only a huge slap in the face to this investigation, to anyone, to the American public,” he added. “It’s a part of a massive cover up.”

Pressure has been mounting on the Justice Department to pursue new prosecutions in the Epstein case, particularly after the United Kingdom arrested former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and former ambassador Peter Mandelson for crimes related to their association with the disgraced financier.

The Oversight Committee’s probe’s work has been complicated by the fact that Maxwell is unwilling to answer questions and the central figure, Epstein, died behind bars years ago. Maxwell’s lawyer David Oscar Markus told Blue Light News in an extended interview last month that he believed there was a good chance his client would ultimately be pardoned by the president.

Markus said he reached out to then-deputy attorney general Todd Blanche last year to help facilitate Maxwell’s interview with the Department of Justice. She was granted limited immunity for that two-day conversation and moved to a minimum security prison camp shortly afterward.

In her interview with Blanche, she emphasized that she had not seen Trump engage in impropriety with Epstein. The president’s relationship with Epstein has been the source of much intrigue, as Trump has maintained the two had a falling out years ago.

Garcia said the Oversight Committee should investigate why and how Maxwell was moved to a different facility after her interview with Blanche.