Congress
Jeffries calls on Biden to pardon more Americans
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called on President Joe Biden to pardon more people convicted of nonviolent offenses amid controversy over the president’s pardon of his son, Hunter Biden.
“During his final weeks in office, President Biden should exercise the high level of compassion he has consistently demonstrated throughout his life, including toward his son, and pardon on a case-by-case basis the working-class Americans in the federal prison system whose lives have been ruined by unjustly aggressive prosecutions for nonviolent offenses,” Jeffries said in a statement.
Jeffries’ comments echo the calls from some other Democrats who in recent days have asked Biden to use his clemency powers for more Americans in federal custody besides Hunter and to address sentencing disparities. But it did not pass judgment on the pardon of Hunter Biden itself. Some in the caucus have openly criticized the president since the pardon was issued and said it could tarnish his legacy and open a lane for Donald Trump to issue similar sweeping pardons.
Sen. John Fetterman has faced a tide of public criticism from fellow Democrats as he stakes out lonely ground as a critic of the far-left wing of his party — and another wave rolled in Wednesday after he made a surprise video appearance at the Republican midterm convention.
So far, however, his Senate colleagues haven’t joined the pile-on.
Democratic senators are staying above the fray as they work to flip the majority in November amid constant speculation that the 57-year-old Pennsylvanian could trigger a nightmare scenario by leaving the party and caucusing with the GOP.
Some have worked to publicly bat down suggestions that Fetterman could abandon Democrats for the final two years of his term — something he has denied considering, even as he continues to raise eyebrows with his outspoken support of Israel, bashing of democratic socialists and close relationships with Senate Republicans.
“John Fetterman is a friend and an important member of our caucus. It’s a waste of energy to get spun up about his voting record or place in our party — he votes with us 90 percent of the time,” Democratic Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont, who is close with Fetterman, said in a statement to Blue Light News before the convention appearance. “We need a big tent if we’re going to win in November.”
That silence could be tested in the coming weeks. Recent reports, including in the Wall Street Journal, detailed how he has skipped meetings with key constituencies and largely stopped participating in caucus lunches or committee meetings. Fetterman denounced the report as “lies, half-truths, innuendos, [and] smears” peddled by “disgruntled staffers.”
A social media account purported to be run by former Fetterman aides has teased the release next week of additional stories and evidence related to his job performance, which could spark a new wave of questions for the senator and his colleagues once they return Monday from a five-week summer recess.
Fetterman further fueled party-switch chatter with a recent appearance with Pennsylvania’s Republican senator, David McCormick — then heaping praise on McCormick in the convention video Wednesday, where he also pledged to “work with” President Donald Trump to protect his state’s steel industry.
In a statement Wednesday, Fetterman said his Republican convention remarks were intended to pay tribute to McCormick “as a great American and friend.”
“We are in different parties, but we are both Team PA,” he said. “We have delivered hundreds of millions of dollars back to Pennsylvania, fought for improved transportation and affordable housing, and the Steel Way of Life.”
“I’m a lifelong Democrat who votes overwhelmingly with my party — and should the Senate flip in November, I will still be the 51st vote that I ran on,” he added.
If any Democrats fear driving Fetterman into the GOP’s arms with intraparty criticism, some of his potential 2028 competitors aren’t among them.
Former Rep. Conor Lamb, who lost to Fetterman in 2022 and is mulling a 2028 bid, said in an interview that he’s believed for close to a year that his onetime Democratic primary foe would become a Republican — a position he acknowledged puts him “in the minority.”
“I don’t think anything I say, or anyone who is a Democrat says, affects him all that much,” Lamb said, adding, “The fact that the Senate Democratic leadership thinks they can keep them on their team by saying a few nice things about him in public just shows that they haven’t learned who they are dealing with.”
Pennsylvania Rep. Chris Deluzio, a Democrat who is also mulling a 2028 Senate bid, also shrugged off a question about if the public criticism of Fetterman — who he accused of “undermining our efforts to take back the House” — could drive the senator to become a Republican.
“In the two years he has left in this job, in this term, he should be a Democrat,” Deluzio said. “That is what the people of Pennsylvania elected him to do. That is what they expect him to do, that is what I would say he should do with what he has left in the Senate.”
Still, Senate Democrats have largely avoided casting aspersions. Republicans hold a three-seat advantage, and Democrats believe they are in striking distance of picking up the four seats they’d need to win control. A post-election Fetterman flip could put the Senate back to 50-50, giving Vice President JD Vance the tiebreaking vote.
Multiple Democratic senators approached by Blue Light News this week about Fetterman simply declined to comment. Asked in a late July news conference if he wanted Fetterman to stay in the party, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he did.
“He is a very good member of Congress,” he said. “The people in our caucus very much like him and respect him, and we’re a big tent party. We can have a lot of different views in that party.”
A Senate Democratic aide — who, like others quoted for this story, was granted anonymity to speak candidly — said Democrats “are keen on batting down” the speculation that Fetterman would split from the caucus.
Fetterman has repeatedly downplayed that possibility. In May he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that he had “no plans to leave” the Democratic Party and that he would be “terrible Republican who still votes overwhelmingly with Democrats.” In July, at the Hill Nation summit, he appeared to anticipate being a pivotal member of the party next year.
“If I was going to, I would have already done that,” Fetterman said in July about a party switch. “And I would remind everybody, we are talking about how it’s possible, how we could retain the majority in the Senate — well, that’s because I make that mathematically possible. And if we flip those four seats, then I would be 51.”
But he laid out a red line, saying there was “one condition” where he would abandon the Democrats — if they become “the anti-Israel party.”
Privately, many Senate Democratic colleagues profess to be in the dark about what Fetterman is thinking. Though his colleagues are collegial, he frequently sits alone off the Senate floor during votes.
“I really don’t have any insight into that,” said one Senate Democrat when asked about the party-switch chatter.
There’s been speculation within the Senate for months that Fetterman would simply retire rather than mount a difficult reelection campaign in 2028, driven by the widespread view that he doesn’t enjoy the job. Fetterman has sidestepped questions about a second term, arguing that it is too early for such questions.
A second Senate Democratic aide added that there was “definitely a concern” about Fetterman but that he still voted “pretty solidly” with Democrats.
“There’s a hope that a lot of this is just positioning … and not a real possibility,” the aide said. “Hopefully they can find a way to keep him in the fold, but it’s not really clear what he actually wants.”
A third Senate Democratic aide acknowledged the internal rumors about what he would do while adding that Fetterman and his office are “insular” — making it difficult for anyone outside of his inner circle to know what he’s thinking. A fourth added that Senate Democrats weren’t taking the speculation that Fetterman could flip “too seriously” for now.
But the aide added that Fetterman could make the caucus’ life “harder if he ends up being the 51st vote if the majority is in hand next January.”
Republicans, meanwhile, have made it clear that they are trying to recruit Fetterman. McCormick publicly defended him amid the latest round of Democratic backlash, and Majority Leader John Thune told reporters recently that he and other Republican senators have had “conversations” with Fetterman and “would welcome the opportunity” to have him join the GOP.
Only 22% of self-identified Democratic voters in a recent New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena poll have a favorable opinion of Fetterman, compared to 73% of self-identified Republicans.
But it’s far from clear that Fetterman could win a GOP primary given that he still votes with Democrats most of the time.
Lamb said Fetterman’s inability to prevail in a Democratic primary in 2028 was “as sure a fact as gravity” and added that the senator’s path in a GOP primary wouldn’t be easy, either.
“I think there are probably people in the state who would run against him if he was in a Republican primary,” Lamb said.
Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) said that he takes Fetterman “at his word” that he’s a Democrat and said doubted he’d ever be fully embraced by GOP primary voters. He cited Fetterman’s poor ratings from key groups influential on the right, such as the National Rifle Association and National Federation of Independent Business.
“He’s a good man. Like I said, he’s got courage,” he said, before adding, “He’s a Democrat and maybe a traditional Democrat, so I don’t think that would be something the Republican Party would embrace.”
Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.
Members of Congress are confronting a grim reality: They are ill-equipped to rein in advanced artificial intelligence that one expert warns could “kill us all” by the end of the decade.
A viral social media post this week from ex-Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon cautioned that AI companies are “gambling with our lives” as they race to develop superintelligent models — prompting alarm from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and new calls to action.
In conversations with Blue Light News throughout the day Wednesday, more than a dozen lawmakers and aides from both parties said they were hopeful Congress would start taking the issue seriously. By Wednesday evening, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, was pledging to “work with Congress” to implement “mandatory, capability-based national AI safety regulation.”
But many also conceded that Congress is currently sleepwalking into a crisis, far from ready to tackle the stakes of the moment in light of both philosophical differences and intractable partisan politicking.
“I think we’re finally hitting a tipping point,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who co-chairs the House AI Caucus, said in an interview. “I’m just so grateful that the whole world is finally paying attention … and now the question is, what do we do?”
Mounting worries inside the tech industry about a looming AI apocalypse are beginning to resonate with more members of Congress. Building on the panic seven weeks ago when hundreds of OpenAI-generated “agents” went rogue and hacked another AI platform, Hugging Face, lawmakers Wednesday called for radical action in the immediate aftermath of Coxon’s X posts late Tuesday night.
“There’s broad consensus — and in speaking with the AI companies directly, they want a regulatory framework,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), a vulnerable moderate incumbent who has introduced bipartisan AI safety legislation, said Wednesday.
He called it “one of the biggest issues that Congress has to tackle over the next two years.”
It’s far from certain this desire to make progress on the issue will translate into meaningful legislative activity — and certainly not before the end of the year, with some lawmakers questioning whether their colleagues take the matter seriously or fully understand how the technology even works.
Democratic Rep. Sam Liccardo of California, who leads AI policy for the centrist New Democrat Coalition, said in an interview his team recently struggled to convince other members to attend a series of events at the Library of Congress that featured OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
“There have been serious conversations among a small number of us, and we need that number to be larger. There is a percentage of my colleagues who are still trying to spell AI,” Liccardo said, adding, “we need to dramatically increase the base knowledge of Congress if we’re going to legislate meaningfully. And I know that is not going to happen overnight.”
Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas), who introduced a bill this summer to create an AI “kill switch” with Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), said in an interview he thought efforts to put checks on advanced models would be a priority in the next Congress. Quicker action, he agreed, would be a heavy lift.
“The number of days that we have left between the election and the end of the year is going to be very tough to educate members and then move a meaningful bill,” he said. “The broad scope of members on both sides of the aisle are trying to get caught up.”
There’s also not yet consensus on the appropriate reaction and policy response to the threat posed by superintelligence. No committee in either chamber has considered a substantive proposal to put guardrails on AI development amid disagreements over how aggressive the federal government should be in regulating the private sector and stifling innovation.
Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who convened a markup of AI-adjacent bills in August that steered clear of addressing safety regulations, said in an appearance on ABC’s “The View” Wednesday that the new warnings were “highly concerning” and endorsed passing legislation to prevent “catastrophic risk.”
He pointed to a pending bipartisan bill from Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) that is expected to represent a more targeted approach than a version of the legislation that advanced out of the Commerce Committee in the previous Congress.
Klobuchar and Thune, however, have provided no timetable for when their new measure might be formally introduced. Thune’s office did not respond to a request for comment, while Klobuchar in a statement said only that she would “continue to work toward a bipartisan agreement on legislation for commonsense guardrails to address the risks posed by AI systems,” while adding, “it’s clear we need to act now and not wait.”
Across the Capitol, House Democrats made especially clear in the aftermath of Coxon’s X posts that they will seek to move quickly if they win the majority in November, with some now discussing whether to establish a select committee on AI.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries convened a Democrat-only AI commission this term to formulate policy recommendations after Speaker Mike Johnson declined to reconstitute a bipartisan AI taskforce, and co-chair Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) projected confidence Wednesday the group’s forthcoming report would pave the way for meaningful legislative action on AI safety.
Passing AI safety legislation will require buy-in from Republicans, however — and Gottheimer, asked if Congress is moving fast enough, blamed GOP leaders for lack of momentum.
“What you’re really asking me is if the Republican leadership is working fast enough on this, right? Because they’re the ones who control the agenda,” he said. “I think you’ve seen a lot of action out of members of Congress. I think our commission has been incredibly active.”
Other Democrats joined Gottheimer in blaming Republicans for slow-walking legislation.
“It only would take one phone call from the speaker to say, ‘I want five Democrats and five Republicans in a room, and I want them to emerge from that room next week with legislation that we can bring to committee and then bring to the floor,’” said Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “That’s it.”
Spokespeople for Johnson and Jeffries did not return requests for comment.
Even if Democrats take back gavels after the midterms, they, too, lack a clear plan to address the growing threat of unchecked AI. Progressive leaders, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), are advocating for a ban on superintelligence — a proposal that more moderate Democrats claim has no viable path to passage.
“Bernie Sanders,” said Gottheimer, “wants to put it in the box and throw it away, but that’s not living in reality. I think we need a reasonable, smart, commonsense approach that’s realistic but also sets up mandatory rules of the road — legislative rules of the road.”
Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) brokered a bipartisan safety bill with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) that the two lawmakers have pitched as a consensus proposal, but it has so far failed to win the support to advance.
“You cannot just put your head in the sand on AI and say, ‘I hope it works out.’ You can’t just go in and say, ‘Government’s got the solution — they’re just going to ban it all.’ That’s just not going to work,’” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a staunch conservative who is leaving Congress at the end of the year, said in an interview. “We’re going to have to be thoughtful as leaders and actually have some friggin’ leadership.”
Owen Dahlkamp, Gabby Miller, Katherine Long, Mia McCarthy and Alex Gangitano contributed to this report.
Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.) plans to seek the top GOP spot on the Judiciary Committee, a spokesperson said. The announcement came soon after POLITICO reported that the current chair, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), does not intend to seek a fourth term leading Republicans on the panel. Lee, who is seeking her third term in November, is well down the committee’s seniority list but could make a case to the House GOP steering committee that she is best equipped to lead the key panel as a former state judge.
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