Congress

Max Miller gets NRCC’s help on the airwaves

Published

1 hour ago

September 3, 2026

House Republicans’ national campaign arm is joining with embattled GOP Rep. Max Miller to buy TV airtime as allegations of domestic abuse against him put the previously safe north Ohio seat into play.

The NRCC is planning a joint three-week ad buy with Miller’s campaign starting Sept. 7 and totaling more than $150,000. Miller, who represents parts of the Cleveland suburbs, is not among the NRCC’s “Patriots” — the most vulnerable members who typically get the bulk of its spending.

“Democrat Brian Poindexter backs a radical far-left agenda that’s completely out of touch with northeast Ohio,” NRCC spokesperson Zach Bannon said in a statement. “Ohioans have a clear choice: Max Miller will vote to stop socialist policies, and Bernie-bro Brian Poindexter will make them a reality.”

Miller said in a statement that he is grateful to Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), the NRCC chair, for his “faith in my ability to win this race and the support the NRCC is supplying.”

“Republicans know that this race is bigger than me, it’s about ensuring we maintain this majority,” he said.

Miller is facing allegations of abuse from his ex-wife Emily Moreno, the daughter of Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno. Both of Ohio’s GOP senators have called on Miller to resign over the allegations, which Miller denies.

A DCCC spokesperson, Riya Vashi, called the joint ad buy “a new low” for national Republicans.

“National Republicans are proudly bankrolling an alleged abuser with a lengthy history of damning accusations from multiple women,” she said. “Every House Republican who gives a dime to the NRCC owns this shameful choice.”

The ad buy comes after Miller’s Democratic challenger Brian Poindexter released his first ad of the general election earlier this week, largely focused on his own family, which is running as part of a six-figure buy on digital, cable and broadcast television.

Amid calls to drop his reelection bid last month, Miller remained defiant and refused to exit the race ahead of the deadline to pick another GOP candidate, and Republicans including members of President Donald Trump’s political circle have rallied around him since it became clear he would remain on the ballot.

Speaker Mike Johnson earlier this week said that he supports Miller’s reelection, though he later said he is not planning to campaign with Miller before the election.

Andrew Howard contributed to this report.

Congress

AI and crypto groups were among the biggest players in this year’s primaries. Here’s how they did.

Published

38 minutes ago

September 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

At least one in six members of the next Congress are all but certain to have made it there with the backing of the crypto industry or artificial intelligence interests.

A smattering of super PACs representing factions from those sectors spent a whopping $127 million across more than 100 primaries this year in an effort to shape the future of Congress — and won roughly 90 percent of them.

It’s a major influence play from a set of political players that went from not existing four years ago to being among the biggest spenders so far this cycle.

But behind the headline track record, the outcomes are more nuanced: Many of the groups’ victories were in effectively uncontested races in which they backed incumbents who did not face serious primary challenges.

In Republican primaries, the groups had a near-perfect track record, in large part because they usually aligned with endorsements from President Donald Trump. In Democratic contests, their records were more mixed: They racked up plenty of wins but also lost some high-profile races when they were up against each other or other moneyed groups — or when their spending itself became an issue in the race.

“Campaign finance is in such a Wild West, uncharted territory, and wealth is so obscene that they can spend this kind of money on politics,” said Cooper Teboe, a Silicon Valley-based Democratic consultant. “So I think we’re in truly deeply uncharted territory.”

The rapid growth of tech money aiming to influence politics and policymaking has created a complicated constellation of groups. Fairshake, a pro-cryptocurrency super PAC primarily funded by Coinbase, Ripple Labs and the venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz, launched in the 2024 cycle and funds two other super PACs, one each supporting Democrats and Republicans.

Then came the AI super PACs this cycle, including Leading the Future, a pro-AI group funded by major industry executives including OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, which also backs both parties through two other super PACs. And Public First Action, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit whose backers include the firm Anthropic and bills itself as an AI regulation-focused counterweight to Leading the Future, helps fund two super PACs of its own.

And there are a smattering of other smaller PACs that spent in primaries too.

“Super PACs play a huge role in American politics, and not for the good,” said former Rep. Brad Carson (D-Okla.), who co-founded Public First Action last year. “The innovation that we had at Public First was rather than just complain about Leading the Future having a super PAC, we were like, ‘OK, we will regrettably fight fire with fire.’”

The eye-popping spending comes as voters and party leaders continue to grapple with the emerging technology, with battles over AI regulation and data centers front and center ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The super PACs have scaled up quickly as the industries have grown rapidly and created a new class of tech billionaires flush with cash they can spend on politics. The new spenders largely have not fallen along traditional partisan or ideological lines, but sought to boost lawmakers on both sides of the aisle that they see as aligned with their legislative interests — or oust those who have gone against their priorities.

“For our organization, we said we were going to show up and show up at scale, and we did,” said Josh Vlasto, who worked for Fairshake last cycle and now helps run Leading the Future, the network of super PACs funded by AI executives and investors that advocates for the expansion of the technology.

“We wanted to show up for candidates in primaries, particularly ones that were being attacked on issues related to AI or had a really strong position on AI,” he said.

For most of the groups, the primaries are expected to just be a warmup. Fairshake and its affiliates had just shy of $123 million in the bank at the end of July, according to the most recent campaign finance reports. Last cycle, that network of crypto groups spent $87 million across more than two dozen House and Senate races for the general election.

Among the group’s wins: A Fairshak-network PAC put $12 million behind GOP Rep. Barry Moore’s Senate campaign, seeing him through a six-way primary after Trump also endorsed him. The crypto group also helped boost Rep. Christian Menefee (D-Texas) in a member-on-member primary against Rep. Al Green, and also got its preferred candidates to replace two retiring Democrats, with Adrian Boafo winning the primary for Rep. Steny Hoyer’s seat in Maryland and Jasmine Clark set to replace the late Rep. David Scott in Georgia.

“We’re just getting started building the largest pro-crypto Congress in history,” Fairshake spokesperson Geoff Vetter said in a statement.

Most of the races where the groups spent heavily in primaries will not be competitive in the general election, meaning the candidates that made it through are all but certain to be in Congress next year. Just over half of candidates who got a boost from cryptocurrency or AI-linked super PACs in their primaries were running in open seats, while a bit over 40 percent were incumbents and a handful were challengers.

The vast majority of incumbents easily win their primaries, and those who got backing from crypto or AI groups largely also won by healthy margins, making it hard to attribute their victory to the PACs. One notable exception was Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-N.C.), who warded off a primary challenger by roughly 1 percentage point after getting $1.6 million in backing from Jobs and Democracy PAC, a Public First affiliate.

Some of the biggest losses for both the cryptocurrency and AI groups came in their highest-profile races where they spent the most — and where the fact they were spending at all also became itself a campaign issue.

In Michigan’s 13th District, Rep. Shri Thanedar, a vocal cryptocurrency proponent, lost his seat despite Fairshake’s $2 million spent in the race. In Illinois, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi lost a Democratic Senate primary despite nearly $10 million in spending from Fairshake. (His opponent, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, slammed him for being supported by a “MAGA-backed crypto PAC.”)

“If they’re spending against you, you are in a good position for reelection because you’re clearly where popular opinion is,” said Teboe, the Silicon Valley-based Democratic strategist.

No race attracted as much tech money and attention as New York’s 12th District, where Jobs and Democracy PAC and two smaller groups came head-to-head with Think Big, a Leading the Future affiliate. The four groups combined spent nearly $25 million, with Think Big opposing New York Assemblymember Alex Bores’ campaign, while the other three groups supported him.

Bores, who had championed the Raise Act, an AI safety and regulation bill in the state Legislature, ultimately lost to Micah Lasher — though Lasher is also an AI critic, making the result hardly a win for the industry. The race and AI-backed spending also significantly raised Bores’ profile as a critic of the industry.

“Lasher is a co-sponsor of the Raise Act and harsher on the AI sector than Alex Bores was, and by choosing to fight in New York City, and making it their mission to destroy Alex, they made him into a national hero,” said Carson, who leads Public First, the group behind Jobs and Democracy PAC.

The Manhattan congressional race also laid bare the competing goals of the dueling AI-backed super PACs. Public First focuses on advocating for AI regulation, Carson noted, arguing that it should be excluded from Blue Light News’s tally of crypto and AI spending. The group is bankrolled in part by $40 million in donations from Anthropic.

Bores described the AI industry’s political spending this cycle as a new effort to persuade public opinion that immediately fell flat with voters.

“Social media came on the scene and everyone’s like, ‘Oh, Arab Spring! It’s gonna lead to democracy! It’s gonna save the world!’” Bores said in an interview. The AI industry “started from the jump, realizing they were deeply, deeply, deeply unpopular, and the only way that their policy choices would be implemented is if they could drown out the voice of the American people with money.”

The Leading the Future affiliates spent in nearly a dozen primaries since New York, winning all of them. The groups boosted candidates including Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), who faced a progressive primary challenger in a seat altered by redistricting, and Democrats Jeremy Moss and Dan Koh in open seats in Michigan and Massachusetts, along with Republicans such as South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham and Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman, who is running for Senate.

Compared to hotly contested general elections, which can attract tens of millions in spending for House races and hundreds for Senate races, primaries are relatively affordable for outside groups, said Rich Barton, a senior research fellow at Unite America, a group that advocates for reforms to the primary process. Still, the scale of the spending seen in some of the open-seat primaries this year was new.

“There’s not a precedent for the more than $10 million that we’ve seen a single entity spend in a single primary,” Barton said.

Congress

Stauber will run for top Republican on House Natural Resources, while Westerman ponders next move

Published

3 hours ago

September 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rep. Pete Stauber of Minnesota is making a run for the top Republican spot on the House Natural Resources Committee in the next Congress — teeing up a potential battle with the current chair, Bruce Westerman, who isn’t ruling out asking for a waiver to serve another term.

“Congressman Stauber is running to serve as chair/ranking member of Natural Resources, and he is speaking to members of our Conference, including steering members,” his spokesperson said in an email Thursday.

The GOP Steering Committee, composed of party leaders and members of the conference representing different geographic regions, will meet after the midterms to make assignments to the House’s standing committees — and vote on recommendations for who should be the senior Republican on those committees.

Stauber has sat on Natural Resources since 2020 and currently chairs the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee. He has long been active on energy and environmental issues and led the successful effort to overturn a Biden-era ban on mining near the Boundary Stone wilderness in his district.

His public interest in leading his party on the panel could create an uncomfortable showdown with Westerman. The Arkansas Republican is finishing up his third term as the top Republican on Natural Resources and so must step aside at the end of this year, per House GOP term limit rules. But Westerman also could seek a waiver from the steering committee to serve a fourth term, and in an interview Thursday, he was noncommittal on his plans.

“We’ll figure all that out after the election,” Westerman said, adding he was at this time “more focused on winning the majority.”

“It’s premature for me to be talking about a waiver right now,” he added — but, when asked whether that meant he would not ask for one, he replied, “I didn’t say that.”

Westerman also dismissed the idea that a decision to move ahead with a waiver request would forecast a messy fight with Stauber.

“Pete and me battling? No … Pete and I have always been friends, and I’m just not focused on that,” he said.

Stauber’s spokesperson said the lawmaker would pursue the committee leadership position regardless of Westerman’s decision.

Westerman is one of multiple Republican chairs who are term-limited next year and considering asking for an exemption, while risking some intraparty conflicts along the way.

House Agriculture Chair GT Thompson (R-Pa.) has already submitted a waiver request and circulated it with colleagues, including those on steering, according to a document obtained by Blue Light News. It comes as Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), who is next in line to become chair or ranking member of the committee, has privately approached GOP leaders about succeeding Thompson, according to a person granted anonymity to discuss private discussions.

Rep. Mike Rogers of Arkansas, the chair of House Armed Services, also plans to seek a waiverto serve as the top Republican on the panel in the next Congress. Republican Reps. Ronny Jackson of Texas, Rob Wittman of Virginia and Trent Kelly of Mississippi have said they are interested in the position as well.

Congress

2 House Democrats face off for leadership slot that isn’t even open yet

Published

3 hours ago

September 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A fierce internal battle is developing among House Democrats for a job that might not even be open next Congress.

Reps. Sara Jacobs of California and Lauren Underwood of Illinois are expected to seek the caucus vice chair post. The job is currently held by Rep. Ted Lieu of California, who is expected to step aside only if Democrats prevail in the midterms — allowing Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to become speaker and other members of the party leadership to step one rung up the ladder.

Lieu would be in line to become caucus chair in that scenario, and the vice chair would become the only obvious vacancy in the House Democratic hierarchy.

Jacobs sent a Dear Colleague letter Monday officially declaring her run, while a person familiar with Underwood’s thinking who was granted anonymity to discuss her plans said she is “definitely running” but is “exclusively focused on winning back the House” for the time being.

The two candidates already hold lower several level leadership positions. Jacobs is the parliamentarian of House Democrats’ Steering and Policy Committee and is a regional vice chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Underwood is a co-chair of House Democrats’ messaging arm, the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. She is also a co-chair of the DCCC’s Red to Blue program.

Rep. Lori Trahan of Massachusetts had also been floating a run to colleagues but announced Wednesday she is no longer pursuing the role. Some House Democrats have bristled at Trahan’s attempt to broker a bipartisan deal to regulate artificial intelligence.

“Rep. Trahan is grateful to the many colleagues who’ve encouraged her to run for Vice Chair,” spokesperson Francis Grubar said in a statement. “She has decided not to seek the position, and will keep her focus on the issues she’s been working diligently to address, including confronting the real risks of frontier AI.”

“She’ll keep doing everything in her power to elect Democrats, retake the House, and make Hakeem Jeffries the next Speaker,” he added.