Congress
House votes delayed
GOP leaders have delayed scheduled House votes after Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) spent more than an hour on the floor reading an impeachment resolution targeting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. That threatened to create a conflict between a planned 1:30 p.m. vote series and a 3 p.m. portrait unveiling ceremony for former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
That vote series is now expected at 4 p.m., and a later series — to include a vote focused on a data center utility costs — is being pushed to 9:30 p.m.
Sen. Bernie Sanders decried Washington on Tuesday for failing to regulate artificial intelligence, including the advanced models that AI researchers, tech executives and safety advocates warn pose an existential risk to humanity.
“Congress under both Democratic and Republican control has been asleep at the wheel,” the Vermont independent said at the Pro-Human Assembly in D.C. “And we now have a president whose ignorance regarding this issue is truly embarrassing.”
President Donald Trump has repeatedly brushed aside concerns of catastrophic risks from AI, saying the U.S. should instead focus on maintaining its competitive edge over China. On Monday, he blasted calls for additional AI guardrails in a series of posts on Truth Social, where he repeatedly called these worries a “HOAX.”
People throughout the industry have spent years warning that the risks are real, pushing to slow development of the technology so that safeguards can catch up. Tech CEOs escalated those slowdown calls last weekend, days after an Anthropic researcher captured worldwide attention with a resignation statement that accused the top developers of “gambling with our lives.”
Pressure is growing on Congress to pass AI legislation, with Democrats and Republicans alike rallying around the issue. But House Speaker Mike Johnson seems unlikely to move AI legislation ahead of the November midterm elections, and instead appears focused on setting up a meeting between the White House and AI executives.
Sanders also called on Trump to negotiate a comprehensive treaty with Chinese President Xi Jinping that would halt advanced AI development and ban so-called superintelligence, the point where AI’s capabilities surpass humans’ ability to counter them. Sanders said he is preparing to introduce a bill with Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) next week that would do the same.
The powerful technology is expected to be discussed when Trump and Xi meet Sept. 24. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who manages the administration’s AI relationship with China, plans to meet with his Chinese counterpart this weekend.
Senate Democrats battered FBI Director Kash Patel Tuesday at a Senate Judiciary oversight hearing, combatively criticizing a broad swath of his behavior and performance to the point the panel’s chairman asked one to “shut up.”’
The scrutiny from Democrats previews how they may try to hold members of the Trump administration accountable if they take the majority after the midterms. It also highlights how the party has embraced the course confrontations common from Cabinet member testimony during the second Trump administration.
The party pressed the intelligence agency director on his investigations into journalists, drinking with U.S. hockey players in an Olympic locker room, and using taxpayer money to go on a “VIP snorkel” trip at the Pearl Harbor memorial in Hawaii, among other issues.
The tension climaxed when the normally genial Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) angrily asked Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to end his questioning of Patel, saying, ““Are you done now? Are you ready to shut up?”
Booker had called Patel a “thug” who targets reporters and their families when they write stories critical of him and the broader Trump administration, and who investigated a journalistafter writing a story on his girlfriend. When Grassley asked Booker to wrap up his comments, Booker said Grassley wasn’t being equitable with members’ time to speak.
“He’s like an 18-year-old kid who wants to join a fraternity that he could never be a member of doing keg stands and chugging with friends,” Booker said.
Patel called Booker “the biggest mockery in the United States Senate, and you’re sitting next to [Senator Adam] Schiff.”
Grassley appeared to grow frustrated with Booker’s remarks and told him he wasn’t respecting him as chair. Booker later called for Patel to be sanctioned for speaking in what he said was a disrespectful manner to Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.).
Earlier in the hearing, Patel sparred with Welch after Welch brought up Patel’s Olympic drinking, and intimated he couldn’t hear well after answering a question.
“Are you hard of hearing? I just said no,” Patel said.
“What you will never understand is the players who are my friends invited me,” Patel said, adding that the FBI was able to ensure “not a single security incident occurred” in at the event and called Welch a “complete and total fraud.”
Patel also pushed back against Booker’s statements around his probes of journalists and Sen. Mazie Hirono’s (D-Hawaii) questioning of his Hawaii trip, saying media coverage of the allegations has been incorrect and senators were lying.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer said proposals to use third-party organizations to evaluate the safety of frontier artificial intelligence models are not enough, instead endorsing a mandatory government vetting regime.
“With our cybersecurity, biosecurity, critical infrastructure, and national security on the line, every AI developer should have to submit their frontier models to the U.S. government for a short-clocked review before they release them to the public,” the New Jersey Democrat said in a statement Tuesday.
The use of third-party evaluators to examine the safety of AI models is a key component of a sweeping AI regulatory framework, dubbed the FRONTIER Act, championed by Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) and Lori Trahan (D-Mass.). OpenAI signaled its support for the provision Tuesday.
But Gottheimer, who co-chairs the House AI Commission, was quick to denounce the idea and its industry backing.
“When AI developers cheer on the framework meant to hold these companies accountable, it should raise red flags, not confidence,” Gottheimer said.
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