Congress

Johnson digs in against proxy voting, citing House’s ‘integrity’

Published

2 years ago

April 2, 2025

Speaker Mike Johnson is digging in against allowing proxy voting for the House’s new parents, heightening a standoff with members of his own party that has frozen legislative action in the chamber.

“While I understand the pure motivations of the few Republican proxy vote advocates, I simply cannot support the change they seek,” Johnson said in a Wednesday post on X.

The speaker is in a serious bind after suffering a stunning defeat over a procedural vote Tuesday, prompting him to send the House home until next Monday. Johnson’s initial effort to block a vote on a proxy-voting measure from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) failed after eight fellow Republicans joined her and every Democrat.

Luna was on the cusp of forcing a vote on her bill under a discharge petition, which can circumvent leadership’s control of the floor.

If Johnson attempts a similar move next week, Luna and several of her GOP allies insist they will vote against any effort to reopen the floor. The speaker’s leadership circle, meanwhile, says if he doesn’t try to kill Luna’s petition, House Freedom Caucus hard-liners who oppose proxy voting will themselves defeat any attempt to get House business moving as usual.

Johnson’s circle is aware of the optics of opposing accommodations for new mothers while also upholding their pro-life values and not risking electoral blowback ahead of the midterms.

“As the father of a large family, I know firsthand the difficulty and countless sacrifices that come with balancing family life and service in Congress,” Johnson wrote Wednesday. “New mothers and all young parents face real challenges in this regard. We truly empathize with them.”

But he said he had an obligation to “defend and uphold the Constitution and the integrity of this institution, which has stood the test of time for more than two centuries.”

Congress

Democrats call on Chuck Grassley to apologize to Jack Smith for basketball gaffe

Published

24 minutes ago

October 8, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Judiciary Democrats are asking chair Chuck Grassley to apologize to Jack Smith on the behalf of his GOP committee members — especially for Sen. Eric Schmitt, the Missouri Republican who falsely accused Smith of secretly attending an NBA game in Atlanta to conspire with local prosecutors about bringing charges against President Donald Trump.

The letter, spearheaded by ranking member Dick Durbin of Illinois and obtained exclusively by Blue Light News, also demands Grassley turn over the underlying records Schmitt used during a hearing last month to levy the false allegations against Smith, the Biden-era special counsel investigating whether Trump sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election and mishandled classified documents.

The episode, Democrats wrote, “caused needless confusion, slowed down the business of the Committee, introduced the possibility that false information would be entered uncontested into the record, and created an embarrassing stain on one of the most important committees in Congress.”

The Democratic letter to Republicans marks an escalation of the typical bickering between the two parties. It’s also reopening a not-yet-closed wound for Republicans, whose efforts to damage Smith’s reputation during their high-profile hearing were blunted by Schmitt’s error.

Congressional Republicans have for years been working to undermine Smith’s investigations as politically motivated, and many GOP senators on the Judiciary Committee hoped to use their hearing with Smith to catch him in either a lie or an admission he weaponized the judicial system against Trump.

To that end, Schmitt used a giant poster to display images of text messages from Smith’s team in an attempt to prove the special counsel was in Atlanta on Feb. 3, 2024, for an NBA basketball game between the Atlanta Hawks and the Golden State Warriors — scheduled around the same time local prosecutor Fani Willis, who was working to convict Trump over his 2020 election subversion scheme, was facing damaging questions about her conduct.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) and Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) display a sign accusing Jack Smith of meeting with Fani Willis during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 29, 2026.

Smith ultimately clarified he did not attend the NBA game on that date but was instead at a women’s basketball game at the University of Maryland between the Terrapins and the University of Iowa Hawkeyes, then led by star player Caitlin Clark. The exchange went viral and Schmitt continues to show no regret for his apparent misunderstanding.

The text messages “established only that Senator Schmitt had not done the basic due diligence of verifying a document before relying on it,” the Democrats wrote in their letter to Grassley, adding that, “nonetheless, Senator Schmitt incorrectly asserted to Mr. Smith, ‘I think you’ve already perjured yourself,’ and inexcusably branded him ‘a dirtbag,’ language which is beneath the dignity of this Committee and the Senate.”

And because Democrats didn’t have advance access to the materials Schmitt referenced in his presentation during the hearing, they said they were “were forced to synthesize these baseless accusations and respond in real time.”

Democrats also took aim at another record they say was not shared with them ahead of time: a readout of an Aug. 17, 2024, phone call between Smith and the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department, which Schmitt and fellow Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley both referred to during the Senate Judiciary hearing.

The notes from that phone call, which Hawley mentioned during his questioning of Smith, indicated the Public Integrity Section advised Smith to wait to file an updated indictment against Trump until after the 2024 presidential election. Smith had originally sought to file an amended indictment in the 2020 election subversion case following the Supreme Court’s ruling that Trump had broad immunity for official actions undertaken as president.

Smith testified during the hearing that several drafts of a superseding indictment were passed back and forth before one was ultimately approved and filed in August 2024.

“We ask that you immediately provide all committee records that you have withheld, commit to fully complying with Senate Rules … going forward, and apologize to Mr. Smith on behalf of the Committee,” the Senate Judiciary Democrats wrote.

Clare Slattery, a spokesperson for Grassley, said in a statement, “it’s Jack Smith who owes an apology to the thousands of Americans he and his staff ran roughshod over.”

Spokespeople for Smith, Schmitt and Hawley did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Congress

Clean energy group sets its sights on a new GOP target: Lauren Boebert

Published

10 hours ago

October 7, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A clean energy group is launching a $1.5 million spend against Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), its latest effort this midterm cycle targeting Republicans who actively work against renewables.

The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition’s first ad in the spend, which was obtained by Blue Light News, focuses on an embarrassing incident for Boebert: when she was ejected from a live musical performance of “Beetlejuice” for allegedly vaping, singing and recording the show.

“If Lauren Boebert can’t be trusted in a room full of kids, then she can’t be trusted in the halls of Congress,” the ad says.

The spot makes no mention of clean energy or Boebert’s attacks on the so-called “Green New Scam.” The strategy mimics the group’s previous playbook that it has deployed to help defeat Reps. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) in their Republican primaries earlier this year, as the latter two sought statewide office. The PAC had tried to paint Ogles as an absentee member of Congress and Roy as insufficiently MAGA.

The group, which is backed by solar executives, has become an increasingly forceful player this cycle, which has seen a massive influx of outside spending.

“This industry has been villainized and used as a punching bag at times by the right, and the industry hasn’t always punched back,” said Chris Coffey, the CEO of Tusk Strategies, which is helping run the group. “Maybe when they’re deciding who to villainize next year, they will at least be like, ‘You know what? I don’t need problems with those guys.’”

Boebert’s district is historically deeply red. But Invest in Tomorrow also commissioned a poll, which shows she is underwater: 39% of likely voters view her favorably and 55% view her unfavorably. It also found Boebert leading the district’s Democratic nominee Eileen Laubacher by 5 points.

The poll, conducted by Impact Research from Sept. 21 to 24, polled 403 likely voters and had a margin of error of ±4.8%.

Congress

Trahan unveils AI liability discussion draft

Published

18 hours ago

October 7, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rep. Lori Trahan on Wednesday unveiled a discussion draft for a bill that would make artificial intelligence developers liable when their products cause harm.

The legislation comes after OpenAI’s agents escaped containment and autonomously hacked into AI platform Hugging Face and accessed U.S. government websites.

The Clear Liability for Artificial Intelligence Misconduct Act aims to make it easier for those harmed by so-called rogue AI to bring claims against developers. Trahan’s bill does not preempt new state laws on AI liability — historically a prerequisite for attracting Republican support in the House.

“When someone breaks the law and hurts you, you can take them to court. That shouldn’t change just because the wrongdoer is an AI agent,” Trahan (D-Mass.) said in a statement. “Developers have already built systems capable of acting on their own and causing real damage. The CLAIM Act makes sure they answer for what their systems do.”

Legal experts have warned that existing laws require proof of intent or negligence, standards that can be difficult to show in court when AI models go rogue.

Trahan’s bill would ensure AI developers are unable to argue that their AI systems are incapable of intent. Instead, courts “would presume an AI system acted with the state of mind a person taking the same actions would have had.”

Trahan spokesperson Francis Grubar said work on the CLAIM Act began almost immediately after theJuly introduction of the FRONTIER Act, legislation with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) that would grant the government power to restrict the deployment of AI models deemed to pose catastrophic risks. While that bill aims to prevent serious harms before they happen, Grubar said the CLAIM Act would address how to impose accountability for existing damages.

Unlike an AI liability proposal announced last week by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Trahan’s legislation would not amend the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Grubar said the CLAIM Act would instead impose clearer liability on a broader range of harms, as well as autonomous or AI-enabled cyberattacks.

The CFFA, an anti-hacking law that bars individuals from accessing a computer without consent, requires proof of intent to hack into a computer system, which can’t be as easily applied to AI agents.

The Hugging Face incident, along with a flurry of other disclosed hacking incidents by rogue AI agents from OpenAI and other AI developers, has sparked a debate over how companies should be held legally liable for their AI systems.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in an interview with Blue Light News’s Decoded podcast, said there should be a new “liability framework” to hold developers accountable for AI-powered cyberattacks. His comments come after White House officials like Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, who was recently appointed as AI czar by President Donald Trump, previously said that existing product liability laws are sufficient for now in addressing AI’s risks.