Congress

Mitch McConnell expected to return to Senate this week

Published

1 day ago

September 14, 2026

GOP lawmakers believe Sen. Mitch McConnell will return to the Capitol this week, ending a three-month health-related absence, according to four people granted anonymity to disclose private conversations.

McConnell’s office is keeping silent about the 84-year-old former Republican leader’s intentions since disclosing last month that he had returned home following weeks in the hospital and rehab. But expectations about a return to the Senate have grown among fellow Kentucky Republicans and his GOP colleagues in the Senate.

The senator’s staff has told senior Republicans that he will be back at the Capitol in time for a Wednesday committee vote on the farm bill, which stalled earlier this summer amid his absence, according to three other people with direct knowledge of the matter who were also granted anonymity.

His vote is needed to get the GOP-written farm bill out of the Agriculture Committee after Chair John Boozman told Blue Light News that he is intending to have another vote this week.

Asked Sunday about the rising expectations of McConnell’s return, a spokesperson pointed back to an August statement that said he would be doing physical therapy from home during the Senate’s five-week summer recess. The spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on McConnell attending the Agriculture Committee meeting.

McConnell has not voted in person since his office announced on June 14 that he had been hospitalized, but the lack of details had fueled online conspiracy theories and even calls from some fellow politicians, including Kentucky’s Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, for more transparency.

McConnell released a lengthy statement in July explaining that he was initially hospitalized for a fall and later developed pneumonia. He indicated at the time he intended to return to the Senate and serve out the remainder of his term, but he didn’t say when that would happen.

Reporters and social media influencers could be seen Monday morning camped outside McConnell’s Capitol Hill home, watching to see if he leaves for the Senate ahead of a scheduled evening vote.

Congress

House panel recommends Leon Black be held in contempt for stonewalling Epstein investigation

Published

11 minutes ago

September 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The House Oversight Committee voted unanimously 41-0 Tuesday to recommend billionaire investor Leon Black be held in contempt of Congress for not fully cooperating with the panel’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

It marks an escalation in an already contentious standoff, where Black defied two congressional subpoenas, refused to appear for a transcribed interview and then sued the committee for allegedly “overstep[ing] its authority.”

“Subpoenas are not suggestions. They carry the force of law and require full compliance,” said Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), later noting that Black gave the committee “no choice but to hold him in contempt” after ignoring the subpoenas.

Black has been a target of the committee’s Epstein probe for the personal and financial relationship he maintained with the late convicted sex trafficker, which included a $158 million payment not long after Epstein first became a registered sex offender.

He met with the committee in May for a transcribed interview but declined to speak at length about non-disclosure agreements he entered into with women tied to Epstein. As a result, the panel subpoenaed him to turn over those documents, to which Black responded by refusing to submit all those in his possession and then skipping a scheduled appearance before the panel slated for Sept. 3 — suing the committee instead.

Black’s lawyers, Susan Estrich and Aaron Cutler, in a statement before the votecalled for the House Oversight contempt vote to be postponed.

“This entire charade is about politics and ambition. Given our litigation against Chairman Comer and the Committee, the possible ethics violations by Chairman Comer, the false and potentially libelous and defamatory statements by Ranking Member Garcia, there are more than enough reasons to postpone this mark-up and contempt resolution,” the attorneys said.

The contempt resolution now heads to the full House, which also must vote on whether to refer the matter to the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia for possible indictment.

Comer said it was now up to GOP leadership whether it would schedule the resolution for consideration before the House leaves at the end of the week for recess until after the midterms. A spokesperson for Speaker Mike Johnson did not immediately return a request for comment.

Congress

Most House Democrats vote to advance Trump impeachment

Published

51 minutes ago

September 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A large majority of House Democrats declined to follow their leaders in voting to reject an impeachment resolution targeting President Donald Trump over his immigration enforcement policies.

The 232-147 vote to kill the measure introduced by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) was much narrower than a June 2025 vote on a different impeachment measure brought by Green, where 128 Democrats joined with 216 Republicans to set it aside.

This time, only 18 Democrats joined the 213 Republicans voting to table, with another 46 Democrats voting present — among them Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and the No. 2 and No. 3 party leaders, Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California.

The vote signals a limited appetite among Democrats to look past the president’s controversies even after the leaders suggested impeachment represented a distraction ahead of the November midterms.

Jeffries, Clark and Aguilar said in a Monday statement that impeachment is a “sacred constitutional vehicle” that “traditionally requires a comprehensive investigative process” that had not taken place.

“This is something, oftentimes, I think the right-wing media wants us to talk about, but it’s not anything that is top of the agenda for House Democrats,” Aguilar told reporters about impeachment before the vote.

Joining the three Democratic leaders in voting “present” was Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who introduced a separate impeachment resolution Tuesday against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The House twice voted to impeach Trump when it was under Democratic control in his first term. He was acquitted by the GOP-controlled Senate both times.

Congress

Cruz and Hawley shut down antitrust exemptions for AI companies

Published

2 hours ago

September 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Two Senate Republicans said Tuesday that providing antitrust exemptions to artificial intelligence companies to facilitate discussions on how to make AI safer should be taken off the table — as lawmakers discuss ways to respond to industry warnings about the need for guardrails on the rapidly evolving technology.

“To watch AI CEOs saying, ‘We’re about to destroy the world so give us control of the government so we can lock in our monopoly status and prevent any innovators from challenging us,’ is just lunacy,” Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with FBI Director Kash Patel. “And, by the way, if you’re about to destroy the world, how about, don’t. How about, stop.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) also piled on.

“Absolutely not,” Hawley said. “There is no world in which I will consent to giving the most powerful companies in the history of the world — a small group of three or four of them — antitrust exemptions from our laws so that they can, what, collude together?”

Their comments come amid rising fears that AI models could soon become advanced enough to evade human control if left unchecked. The chief executives of leading AI labs are sounding the alarm over the need to slow down progress, and one possibility could be for Congress to provide an antitrust carveout to allow competing companies to enter into agreements to stem the tide.

Patel didn’t directly address the antitrust comments at the hearing Tuesday but did provide insight into how the FBI is thinking about the emerging technology.

The department, Patel said, uses AI models under test case scenarios to make sure they are cooperating with federal law, adding that it’s important to pursue those who create AI models with criminal intent.

“We need to go after the people who created these models that are going rogue with the specific purpose and intention to commit a criminal act,” Patel said, noting that the FBI “can’t be punishing people if they created something lawfully” and then a criminal used it for nefarious acts.

Patel also said the FBI doesn’t need to create a new division to take on the issue — the existing cyber division is sufficient — but could use additional resources.

“We need federal funding to go out there and buy the creations of these companies and use them for law enforcement purposes,” Patel said.

At a separate news conference Tuesday afternoon, Attorney General Todd Blanche was noncommittal on whether AI companies need an antitrust waiver to self-regulate in the first place.

“Whether entities need an antitrust waiver is not something I can answer from the podium of the White House,” he said. “There’s dozens of factors that go into that, and there’s an application process, and there’s a kind of a process that DOJ and others use to determine what side.

He added, “I can say that, to the extent that those companies are looking to regulate themselves or fix problems that they have, that should do that.”

Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.