Congress

Johnson downplays debt cliff risks with one-track reconciliation push

Published

2 years ago

January 7, 2025

Trying to raise the debt limit in a massive reconciliation bill could completely derail an already messy process. Speaker Mike Johnson is insisting it’s still his plan.

Republicans were already worried that passing new policies on the border, energy and taxes via the budget reconciliation process — which they can use to pass bills on a party-line basis — was going to be difficult. Johnson then promised incoming President Donald Trump in December that he would also use a reconciliation bill to raise the debt ceiling, adding another layer of complexity. Conservatives are generally opposed to raising the debt limit, and have demanded huge spending cuts in exchange for their support.

Asked about the potential risks to the nation’s credit rating if the package is delayed, Johnson indicated in a brief interview Tuesday that he’s still pushing for the measure and reiterated his optimistic timeline for passage.

“We’re gonna get the debt limit handled well before the June deadline. So we’re not concerned about that,” Johnson said, referring to a tentative estimate for when the nation could be risking default unless Congress acts.

GOP leaders have been privately discussing several options for the debt limit, including dealing with it via the budget reconciliation process as part of a deal with hardliners to pair it with deep spending cuts. They’ve also raised the option of incorporating a debt ceiling hike in the upcoming federal funding talks — though Johnson acknowledged in a press conference earlier Tuesday that such a move would require bipartisan negotiations, meaning Democrats could make spending demands in exchange for their support.

In the Tuesday press conference, Johnson reiterated to reporters that “the intention is to handle the debt limit in reconciliation.” He added: “That way, as the Republican Party, the party in charge of both chambers, we then get to determine the details of that.”

Not all Republicans are fully settled on a strategy yet, however.

“How we deal with the debt limit is currently unresolved,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. “We’re going to be looking to see what the House is capable of passing.”

Congress

Sanders to host AI briefing for senators

Published

2 minutes ago

September 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will host a private briefing for senators next week with top artificial intelligence researchers, according to a letter to colleagues obtained by Blue Light News.

The meeting, slated for 4 p.m. on Sept. 16, comes as concerns grow on both sides of the aisle about safety warnings from top AI labs and researchers about the technology’s growing capabilities.

“Congress needs SERIOUS discussions about this issue,” Sanders wrote. “That is why I will be convening a private briefing with some of the leading experts in the world to discuss this recent incident and the extraordinary dangers that AI poses for humanity.”

Geoffrey Hinton, widely known as the “godfather of AI,” is expected to brief the lawmakers alongside MIT professor and co-founder of the Future of Life Institute Max Tegmark and Ajeya Cotra, an independent investigator who helped probe helped probe OpenAI agents’ recent autonomous attack on the tech platform Hugging Face.

Sanders has positioned himself as a leading progressive voice on AI, calling last week for a pause in AI development until a vetting regime can be stood up and a complete ban on superintelligence, a type of AI that may exceed humans’ cognitive capabilities.

Axios first reported details of the briefing.

Congress

Cruz says guardrails needed after dire AI warning

Published

1 hour ago

September 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Ted Cruz said bipartisan legislation is needed to protect the world from the “catastrophic risks” of artificial intelligence.

The Texas Republican’s Wednesday comments on ABC’s “The View” come as lawmakers in both parties call for more urgent attention to AI safety regulations after a researcher who quit Anthropic on Tuesday said tech giants are “gambling with our lives.”

“I read that whole tweet thread that that developer put out. It was highly concerning,” Cruz said in the interview.

He added, “It reminded me, last year I had Elon Musk on my podcast … and one of the questions I asked him, I said, ‘OK, what are the odds that AI destroys humanity?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘10-20%,’ and I’m like, ‘holy crap.’”

As the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, Cruz holds significant influence over the fate of AI legislation.

Cruz worked with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) last year to pass the bipartisan Take it Down Act, which criminalized nonconsensual intimate imagery, including deepfakes and revenge porn created by AI. Cruz called for more legislation on Wednesday to guard against the “catastrophic risks” of artificial intelligence.

Those risks, which he said include biological and nuclear threats, should require government supervision and approval before they can be implemented. Cruz said he is currently working with Klobuchar and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to begin to address those dangers through bipartisan legislation.

“This is scary stuff, but we’re also not going to be able to stick our head in the sand and pretend technology isn’t happening. So we’ve got to put some guardrails on it,” he said.

Cruz said the likelihood of such legislation becoming law was “not clear.”

“Amy and John are negotiating right now. It is possible to move bipartisan legislation … but it ain’t easy.”

Despite his concerns about the risks of AI, he said the U.S. needs to lead the world in the technology’s development.

“One of the real challenges is [that] China is going full speed ahead, and whatever we do here, China is not going to stop,” Cruz said. “If there are going to be killer robots, I would rather they be American killer robots, rather than Chinese killer robots.”

In a social media post highlighting his remarks on the show, Cruz added: “If China leads the world in AI, the whole world is in trouble.”

Congress

Lawmakers urge Congress to act after AI researcher’s dire warning

Published

6 hours ago

September 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Lawmakers in both parties are escalating pleas for legislative action after an artificial intelligence researcher claimed late Tuesday that unchecked AI models could feasibly destroy the world by the decade’s end — and AI developers know it.

While it’s not the first time experts have warned of the existential threats posed by an unregulated industry that is rapidly advancing, it comes at a moment of heightened awareness on Capitol Hill about the need to reach consensus on AI safety legislation before it’s too late.

“The call is coming from inside the house,” Rep. Lori Trahan of Massachusetts, a House Democrat seeking to lead her party on AI policy, posted on X Wednesday. “Safety researchers are resigning, powerful AI models are breaking out of their labs, and companies are racing ahead anyway.”

She was responding to social media posts from former Anthropic AI researcher Jason Coxon, whose warnings were first reported in the Wall Street Journal.

“I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic,” said Coxon, who specialized in training models. “Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

He added: “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt.”

Adding to the alarm, Evan Hubinger, a top Anthropic scientist charged with ensuring AI aligns with human values and ethics, agreed with Coxon’s characterization of the situation.

“We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade,” he posted. “I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”

Spokespeople for OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but leaders of both companies have engaged with Congress in the not so distant past on the issue. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei made a direct plea to lawmakers to impose limits on AI development in a New York Times op-ed last year, while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has repeatedly visited congressional offices this year.

Trahan was not the only member of Congress Wednesday to join the calls for guardrails now.

Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California — a member of leadership and co-chair of an AI commission that Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries charged with formulating AI policy recommendations — called Coxon’s post “exhibit number 739 for why we need to pass the bipartisan AI Kill Switch Bill asap.”

Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida urged Congress to convene a special session on AI, asserting “not enough of Congress is focusing on this.”

“We MUST be ready,” she wrote. “This is happening whether or not we want it to.”

But lawmakers remain far apart on agreeing to any plan. Trahan continues to push for Congress to pass her bipartisan AI safety bill with Republican Rep. Jay Obernolte of California as members of both parties say it falls short.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who has often been ahead of the pack in calling for strict standards — including his latest proposal that would ban AI superintelligence — declared on social media that 81 percent of Americans believe the government is not doing enough to regulate AI.

“AI threatens our economy, privacy, democracy and the well-being of our kids,” he said. “Congress must stand up to the Big Tech oligarchs and protect the American people.

Sanders’ proposal with House Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) to ban AI superintelligence, however, was widely panned by colleagues who said barring innovation was not the answer.