Congress

Leaders squabble, appropriators stoic as shutdown deadline approaches

Published

2 years ago

February 7, 2025

Five weeks away from a government funding deadline, tensions are spiking among lawmakers and shutdown fears are rising.

Top-level relations soured Friday, with Speaker Mike Johnson accusing Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of “trying to set up some sort of a government shutdown” and saying Democrats were “unresponsive.”

Jeffries then shot back, telling reporters Johnson’s comments were “projection” as Democrats remain at the negotiating table. He had backing from the top House GOP appropriator, who said he had spoken with his Democratic counterparts Thursday.

Republicans have been hounding Johnson about a spending plan as the speaker tries to hammer out their conference’s differences on their separate, party-line domestic policy bill. Johnson told reporters later Friday he’d been “laser focused on reconciliation for the last 24 hours,” referring to the budget procedure Republicans intend to use to pass their agenda.

Despite the bluster, top appropriators from both chambers and both parties — known as the “four corners” — are trying to hash out an agreement on topline spending levels. House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the panel, continues to present a relatively upbeat — if urgent — mood about the talks even as the shutdown deadline approaches.

But there are obvious snags. Democrats say they are awaiting a unified offer from House and Senate Republicans, whose numbers are still not aligned. Republicans, meanwhile, are openly discussing a full-year continuing resolution, which would continue fiscal 2024’s spending levels into fiscal 2025 with only a few potential modifications.

Democrats, still feeling burned by the last-minute blowup of a funding deal they cut with Republicans in December, aren’t in any mood to help out with that. DeLauro, for instance, said a yearlong stopgap bill “should be acceptable to no one.”

DeLauro said it was still possible to come to a deal but added that what happened in December — with billionaire Donald Trump ally Elon Musk publicly seeking to tank the agreement — “can’t happen again. We need assurances that once the agreement is made, we can move forward and get these bills done.”

“After twice breaking deals last session, I don’t think there’s a Democrat who says, let them hold up a football again so we can try to kick it,” added Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.). “And it’s going to have to be something consequential and verifiable before I think any of us would be there to support.”

Cole said he continues to prefer passing new, written-from-scratch spending bills for fiscal 2025 over a full-year stopgap. But as appetite grows within his conference to keep spending down, doing so could be a tall order.

“It’s not an unreasonable argument. We’re halfway through. We haven’t gotten it done. Why don’t we wait for the president to lay out his budget and proceed from there?” Cole told reporters Friday morning, discussing the rising calls for a CR. “Every day that goes by, the pressure to just throw in the cards and quit mounts.”

Meanwhile, some Democrats are discussing using their limited leverage over government funding and a coming debt ceiling deadline to extract concessions from Republicans. Those could include protections for “Dreamers,” farmworkers and immigrant families as they seek to respond to GOP hard-line moves on immigration.

“They are a crossroads in this entire process that would allow us to perhaps insert those three pieces into the debate,” said Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), chair of the Hispanic Caucus.

But with Republicans in control of the House and Senate and the White House, Democrats could face a hard choice next month between shutting down the government — something they typically oppose under nearly any circumstance — and supporting a GOP-drafted bill to keep the lights on.

“We’ll see,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Friday. “Everybody knows that Democrats don’t want to shut down the government.”

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

Congress

AI insiders say their technology could doom humanity. Will Congress act?

Published

6 hours ago

September 10, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

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.

Congress

Lee eyes Judiciary

Published

6 hours ago

September 10, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

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.

Congress

Jim Jordan says he will relinquish Judiciary gavel, pass on a return to Oversight

Published

7 hours ago

September 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

DALLAS — Rep. Jim Jordan said Wednesday he plans to end his eight-year run leading Republicans on two of the House’s most prominent committees after this Congress, raising fresh questions about what comes next for the veteran Ohio lawmaker.

Jordan, 62, said in an interview on the sidelines of the Republican midterm convention that he has no plans to seek a waiver of the GOP’s three-term limit on committee leaders to retain the top spot on the Judiciary Committee.

Nor, he said, would he seek to return to lead Republicans on the House Oversight Committee. He previously served as ranking member from 2019 to 2020, when he took the GOP reins at Judiciary, and has at least two terms of eligibility remaining there.

“No, I don’t plan to do that,” Jordan said. “There’s other people who are very interested in Oversight.”

Jordan could have requested a waiver from the House Republican Steering Committee, and several other sitting GOP chairs — including Agriculture’s G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) and Armed Services’ Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) — are expected to do just that. He brushed off questions about why we would not join others in seeking to keep the coveted gavel overseeing the Justice Department, immigration law and other high-profile matters.

“I’m just not going to do it,” he said.

The decision is likely to stoke speculation about another potential leadership run for Jordan, who is seeking his 11th term this fall. He unsuccessfully sought the speakership after Kevin McCarthy’s 2023 ouster, and there has been open chatter in recent months that he is quietly setting the grounds to make another run at the top job.

After flatly denying plans to retain a committee gavel, Jordan was far less direct in addressing other questions about his future in the House.

“I’m focused on one thing, one thing only: winning,” he said. “If the left wins, where they want to take the country is very, very scary.”

Jordan, for instance, did not rule out running against Speaker Mike Johnson for the gavel if Republicans hold onto House majority this fall.

“As I said, I’m focused on winning. We got to win,” he said when asked if he could challenge Johnson, adding “that’s why I’ve been … in 15 different states, and so we just keep going to help our colleagues and candidates.”

Jordan only serves on the Judiciary and Oversight committees, and it is rare for veteran Republican members who are term-limited out of committee leadership posts to stick around as back-benchers in the House.

Jordan did not criticize his fellow chairs who are seeking waivers: “They want a waiver, that’s fine. It’s been granted in the past, and sometimes they get them, sometimes they don’t,” he said, noting it was “up to the conference and the steering committee.”

Asked if he would stay in Congress without a committee or conference leadership position, he noted he is running for reelection: “I’m going to go represent the people in the 4th District.”

Asked a final time what’s next for his decadeslong political career, Jordan chuckled and went through his plans for the day.

“I got like three more interviews,” Jordan said. “And then I’m going to go sit down in that suite, and we’ve got to have some popcorn and watch the speeches. I think that’s what’s next for me.”