Congress
Inside John Thune’s AI dilemma
John Thune has urged Congress to act on artificial intelligence for years. Now, as concerns about the rapidly advancing technology explode, the Senate majority leader is moving carefully.
A former Commerce Committee chair with a long-running interest in tech policy, Thune is locked in negotiations over a bipartisan AI safety bill. The measure, which he introduced a version of in 2023, would establish some safety and security guardrails for the riskiest models — giving the South Dakota Republican, on paper at least, a solution to Washington’s growing AI nightmare.
But the reality is much messier. Despite growing alarm bells from industry insiders about the potentially catastrophic fallout of runaway AI, Republicans and Democrats remain far apart on how stringent a regulatory framework should be — particularly if it overrides state safety laws.
“It’s probably TBD” if an AI bill could pass by the end of the year, Thune told reporters Monday as global players took stock of a host of warnings from AI lab insiders — as well as brushoffs from President Donald Trump and tech-industry investors.
“There are going to continue to be a lot of conversations about potential paths forward, but getting anything done in the near term is going to be challenging given the other stuff we’re dealing with,” he added.
In addition to negotiating his own bill, Thune will need to navigate Trump’s growing recalcitrance. The president dismissed the idea that unregulated AI models could threaten humanity as a “HOAX” Monday, even as his party faces backlash from voters who have grown increasingly skeptical of the underlying technology and the companies developing it.
Thune is also facing competing factions within his own party ranks, not to mention among Democrats, about how heavy of a hand Congress should have in determining AI guardrails. Across the Capitol, Speaker Mike Johnson and other House GOP leaders are warning against moving too quickly on potential regulations, while some other traditional small-government conservatives are suggesting Congress shouldn’t stay on the sidelines.
Senate Republicans are expected to discuss AI policy during a weekly closed-door lunch Tuesday — their first in-person meeting since an industry researcher warned last week that AI could destroy humanity and some company leaders called over the weekend for a joint slowdown on model development.
“We’ve been having meetings about AI for several years, trying to figure out the best thing to do about it,” said Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 party leader. “We’re going to continue talking about it, probably more aggressively now than we had.”
Historically, Republicans have expressed concern about overregulating the AI industry out of fear the government could stifle American innovation and, ultimately, cede ground to China. Thune appeared to flick at that concern within his party Monday, saying he believed there was a role for Congress but that lawmakers should take a “light touch.”
“There is a way in which Congress can put guardrails around those types of more consequential threats, without in any way harming our ability to stay ahead in the AI race, which I think is also very important,” Thune said, arguing that the bill he is negotiating with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) would strike that balance.
But others on Capitol Hill engaged on AI matters who distrust the industry are increasingly convinced a heavy hand is needed given the risks exposed in recent runaway-model incidents.
Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the top Democrat on Senate Commerce, in an interview Monday criticized Republicans over the weekend for dragging their feet and mocked the GOP’s past approach to technology.
She recalled experts on a bipartisan panel warning lawmakers years ago “this could go rogue, so you need to do something, but the Republicans kept saying, ‘No, no — light touch, light touch, light touch, light touch.’”
“I’m pretty sure they’re going to still say that,” Cantwell added.
When told that Thune did in fact utter the phrase “light touch” Monday, she replied, “Okay, that’s bad.”
It’s unclear if Thune’s former Democratic partners on AI regulation will lock arms with him this time around.
Klobuchar has a yearslong history of teaming up with Thune on a variety of issues — including the 2023 version of their AI legislation. But Thune said Monday he spoke with Klobuchar about a revised bill over the weekend and said she was “reluctant to move forward” without more Democratic support.
In a brief interview Monday, Klobuchar said she’s working to strengthen the proposal: “We’re continuing to negotiate.”
In a subsequent statement responding to Thune’s comments, she said it is “clear” from talks that there is bipartisan agreement “that something needs to be done.”
“I’m committed to continuing to work with Senators Thune, Cantwell, and [Commerce Chair Ted] Cruz to ensure we have a bill with strong safeguards,” Klobuchar continued. “I do not expect the chair and ranking member to agree with every provision in the bill but hope we can reach consensus. Time is of the essence.”
The House is expected to leave town this week until after the November elections, and the Senate could follow suit as soon as next week. Neither expected to take up sweeping AI safety legislation before that. A separate bill narrowly focused on the energy impacts of data center development could make it to Trump’s desk before then, but only if all 100 senators agree to expedite it.
Cruz, who has done little on the subject of AI safety since he became chair last year, admitted in a recent interview with POLITICO that the threats being raised inside the top AI labs are “scary as hell.”
But the Texas Republican hasn’t yet scheduled a long-sought committee vote on AI bills after multiple delays. Asked Monday about progress on the Thune-Klobuchar bill, Cruz said, “We’re working on it. We’re not there yet.”
Consensus has also been tough to find inside the Democratic caucus. Progressives including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have called for an immediate moratorium on the development of AI superintelligence, while others have proposed a more moderate approach.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), a Commerce member, said in an interview that lawmakers don’t need to resolve every debate over the future of AI — they just need to establish a baseline standard for transparency and oversight of the industry.
“What we need to do is take down the risk of these models either jumping out of the sandbox or being released into the wild without any third party certifying to their safety,” he said. “And if we could just do that and then fight about the rest of it in a few weeks or months, that would be progress.”
Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz and ranking member Maria Cantwell on Monday said their chamber was “on the cusp” of passing legislation to broadly regulate college athletics, but the measure’s success is still unclear.
“To use a football analogy, I think we’re on the one-yard line,” Cruz (R-Texas) said at a joint press conference with Cantwell (D-Wash.) on the bill.
The duo wants to see an initial floor vote as soon as this week, but acknowledged it could get punted to next week. The legislation could be the most significant measure the chamber passes before the midterms, but it faces opposition despite Cruz and Cantwell’s latest negotiations to win bipartisan support.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune was less confident Monday about the future of the bill.
“We’ll see if we have 60 — I don’t know the answer for sure on that yet,” he told reporters.
Concerns from Republicans that the legislation would pre-empt states’ authority to regulate transgender athlete participation on women’s sports teams have been addressed with added bill language, Cruz said.
Still, some Republicans Monday expressed other doubts on the measure.
“I’m not a real fan of that bill,” Sen. Ron Johnson said in an interview, calling the legislation “way too prescriptive.”
“I don’t think the federal government should be that involved,” he said.
And the Service Employees International Union and other labor and civil rights groups made a push Monday to oppose the bill, while Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) held a press conference with the AFL-CIO criticizing the measure.
“We’re going to do everything in our power — those of use who oppose this in the Senate — to ask our colleagues to step back and oppose moving this forward,” Murphy said, saying the current version would “preserve a system of exploitation that is damaging our athletes.”
At least one Senate Democratic aide with knowledge of ongoing negotiations granted anonymity to discuss private talks said the coalitions against the bill are only expanding despite the view presented by Cruz and Cantwell.
President Donald Trump is setting up a new loyalty test for the GOP on artificial intelligence, and House Republicans have to decide whether it’s an exam they want to pass.
On the one hand, their party’s standard-bearer posted multiple times on Truth Social Monday that warnings of the risks posed by rapidly-developing AI technology is a “HOAX” and urged Republicans not to fall behind China by regulating the industry.
On the other hand, the heads of the nation’s leading AI labs united over the weekend in petitioning Congress to put guardrails on AI development to prevent a human extinction-level catastrophe in a matter of years — a message that’s becoming difficult to ignore on Capitol Hill.
Speaker Mike Johnson, asked about the feedback he’s hearing from his members, said “there’s a lot of opinions on this.”
“We’ve been very consistent on this for a long, long time,” he told reporters. “Obviously, there’s a need for guardrails, but there’s also a keen need for the industry to self-regulate and self-monitor and report to us, and so we’re going to be talking about all that.”
But Johnson, who appears most focused right now on setting up a meeting at the White House in the coming days with tech executives, made clear Monday he’s not likely to move legislation before the midterms — and certainly not at the expense of keeping the House in session past this week.
Majority Leader Steve Scalise in an interview Monday evening explicitly backed Trump’s comments, adding that current law already addresses some of the major concerns about AI dangers.
“If some of these companies want to say that their products are dangerous, they need to go fix their products because that would be a violation of the law,” he argued. “At the end of the day, we’re in a major race with China, and China is moving forward. We need to make sure America wins this race for the future of the world, and do it in a responsible way.”
Vice President JD Vance will speak Tuesday morning to the House GOP Conference, where the administration’s position could become clearer on what it will or won’t accept. But House Republicans appear likely to remain caught between competing demands from Trump and the industry.
Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.), a member of Energy and Commerce who has an AI safety package he crafted with Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), said “certainly there’s an urgent need to pass something.” He waved off worries that House GOP leaders aren’t taking the issue seriously, saying they were “well aware of the urgency” and “people are just being circumspect.”
“It’s like watching a duck swim across the calm surface of a lake, where above the water everything looks serene, and below the water level the ducks’ legs are furiously churning,” Obernolte continued. “I think that’s what’s happening.”
Obernolte also said AI legislation was discussed during the weekly GOP leadership meeting Monday afternoon.
But elsewhere, many House Republicans are making clear they aren’t interested in engaging on the issue. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer brushed off AI officials’ concerns last week during an interview at the GOP midterm convention in Dallas: “Not to be flippant, but back at Columbus’ time, they believed the world was flat.”
House Science, Space and Technology Chair Brian Babin said in an interview Monday he’s “with the president on this.”
“I don’t think that we need to slow down in the face of Chinese opposition,” the Texas Republican added. “We feel like there’s a lot of evidence out there that China is funding a propaganda campaign to keep data centers from being built. We might wind up playing right into their hands if we succumb to this kind of fear mongering.”
“Do you really trust the members of Congress who barely understand AI to write the regulations around something?” asked Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.).
Others made clear they are trying hard to toe the line. Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), the chair of the Select Committee on China, said in an interview he agrees with Trump that Washington should not place undue restrictions on AI development to maintain a competitive edge over China, but “at the same time, we do have a responsibility for public safety.”
Ultimately, one big thing House Republicans are missing right now is a plan to coalesce around.
“There’s a lot of people out there now saying we need to address it this week, but they actually don’t have any solutions or any understanding of how to address the problem,” said Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee and member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over some AI policy.
Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie said that 20% of his panel’s hearings in this Congress have focused on AI, but the committee has yet to rally behind one AI safety bill. He said his members would work during the upcoming seven-week recess to see if they can finalize a proposal for lawmakers to consider in November.
“The speaker’s been saying all summer that we need to get people in the room and come up with proper guardrails,” the Kentucky Republican added. “We’re still trying to build what those guardrails are. So we have to figure it out.”
Obernolte said he is still pushing colleagues to support the bill he has crafted with Trahan, but members of both parties have given the measure a lukewarm reception. Democrats in particular are instead counting on supporting the policy recommendations from the Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries-convened AI commission.
It stands in contrast with the Senate. There, Majority Leader John Thune said Monday it’s “probably TBD” whether an AI bill can pass this year but he’s still been working to negotiate a version of a bipartisan AI safety bill with Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar. The leadership of the Senate Commerce Committee hopes to mark up AI-related legislation before the end of the month, which could include the Thune-Klobuchar measure.
Back in the House, Johnson called AI legislation “a very complex issue that requires a lot of work and bipartisan solutions,” adding that there is “a role potentially for Congress to play, but we have to do this with a balanced approach to ensure that we maintain our edge over China.”
Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas) said he believed the House would be best suited to take up any AI safety bill after the midterms, arguing there are three “bad times” to make policy decisions: before an election, when members are not educated on the issue yet and when emotions are driving the decisions.
“In this moment, there’s a lot of fear,” Moran said. “So we need to get past the election before we can engage in serious policy discussions about AI.”
Gabby Miller, Riley Rogerson and Owen Dahlkamp contributed to this report.
Sweeping Russia sanctions legislation championed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham cleared a procedural hurdle in the House on Monday, likely teeing up a full House vote later in the week.
The House Rules Committee voted to advance the measure, following a heated exchange between lawmakers over a provision that would give the White House more tariff authority.
“Today we have an opportunity to help end the war in Europe and project peace through strength around the globe,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said during the hearing, arguing that “failure to act” on the bill would empower Moscow and encourage other adversaries like North Korea and Iran to further their aggressive actions as well.
But the legislation isn’t out of the woods yet. House GOP leaders could still face procedural obstacles on the floor during the party-line vote that sets the time for debate. House Speaker Mike Johnson can only afford to lose a handful of Republican votes or risk having the measure caught up in a procedural snag.
There’s also a time constraint: If lawmakers don’t vote on the legislation this week, it’ll get punted until after the midterms as the House is set to leave town again next week to campaign for reelection in their home districts.
Johnson suggested to reporters Monday that he could avoid that procedural mess entirely by moving the bill under a fast-track process that would require a bipartisan two-thirds majority for passage.
“I believe we’ll have the votes,” Johnson said, adding that if the procedural rule vote fails, he would shift to the expedited method, known as suspension of the rules.
Although the sanctions legislation, which has White House backing, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate in August, its progress slowed after summer recess amid flagging Republican enthusiasm and growing Democratic opposition. Many Democrats have argued against the bill, saying it would hand too much tariff authority to a White House already liberally applying tariffs against both friends and foes alike.
In addition to mandatory sanctions for Russia’s leadership and energy sector — as well as collaborators in Moscow’s defense industry and so-called shadow fleet — the bill would hand President Donald Trump the power to hit top buyers of Russian oil with 100 percent tariffs.
New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the measure would get “overwhelming Democratic support” if the secondary tariffs were excised.
Meeks offered multiple amendments to the legislation, including a move to strike the tariff language, one to clarify that the EU is not a “country” for the purpose of the secondary tariffs and one to change the broad waiver language in the bill so that sanctions can only be waived if doing so was “vital to the national security of the United States.”
“It is deeply flawed, despite what its title says,” Meeks said of the bill. “It’s unlikely to result in any new sanctions on Russia. It will, however, hand the president of the United States sweeping new tariff authorities that he can abuse to raise the cost on the American people.”
The legislation is only headed to the House floor because Trump told Johnson he wanted the broad tariff authorities “immediately,” Meeks said, reiterating comments he told POLITICO last week.
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who cosponsored the House version of the bill, said that he supported all of Meeks’ amendments — except for stripping the tariff language.
Instead, Hoyer offered an amendment that would identify the 10 countries that would be affected by tariffs: China, India, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Slovakia, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
While the White House isn’t a fan of the amendment, Trump won’t veto the bill, Hoyer said.
“If we do not pass this bill, there will be great joy in the Kremlin and great devastation in Kyiv,” Hoyer said.
The committee ultimately rejected both Meeks’ and Hoyer’s amendments.
Despite Democratic opposition over the tariff provisions, the top Democrat on the committee Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said he thought the bill would pass “no matter what.”
Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
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