Congress

Republicans took shots at Hillary Clinton — and she came ready to fight back

Published

7 months ago

March 3, 2026

Hillary Clinton was subpoenaed to testify about what she knew about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Instead, she was being asked to answer questions about “Pizzagate.”

A former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of State — not to mention a veteran of congressional grillings — warned lawmakers before her deposition in Chappaqua, New York, last week that she had no memory of ever meeting Epstein. She said early on in her closed-door testimony that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was the person they should talk to.

But when several Republican members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee weren’t getting answers about the political power couple’s ties to the late, disgraced financier — pivotal to their ongoing Epstein investigation — they turned to unfounded conspiracy theories regarding Democrats and sex trafficking at a popular District of Columbia pizza shop, along with what the government might know about UFOs.

Clinton was aghast in response to a series of questions from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) regarding the intersection between the “Pizzagate” theory — which centered around allegations that Democrats trafficked children — and the Epstein files, according to video of her deposition released Monday.

“I mean, really — I mean, I expected a lot of interesting questions today, but Pizzagate was not on my list,” she said, smiling.

The roughly six-hour deposition with the Oversight committee exposed all the partisan fault lines in the congressional Epstein probe. Members of the panel walked into two days of depositions with both Bill and Hillary Clinton sharing a bipartisan commitment to interrogate Epstein’s connections to some of the most powerful people — and left just as divided over the purpose of their work.

Neither Bill nor Hillary Clinton have been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. They have maintained that they had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.

“Pizzagate,” said the Oversight Democrats in a statement on X, pointing to the exchange between Boebert and Hillary Clinton. “Embarrassing to spend time asking Secretary Clinton these questions.”

One major flare-up came when Boebert briefly derailed the deposition after it became apparent she leaked a photo of the closed-door deposition to an online far-wing influencer, who put it on social media.

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” said Clinton, slamming her hand on the table before leaving the deposition table altogether in a fury.

“I’m done with this,” Clinton said, as news emerged that Boebert had shared the photo. “You can hold me in contempt from now until the cows come home. This is just typical behavior.”

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) accused the former secretary of State as being “unhinged” in a news conference outside the Chappaqua Performing Arts Center, where the deposition was being held.

And it appeared at times that GOP lawmakers wanted to get a rise out of their interview subject. A probing Mace asked how Clinton felt about seeing her husband in the files.

“I am not going to offer opinions or speculation about anything that I have no context for and was not there,” Clinton cooly responded.

When Mace asked about her relationship with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, she began speaking about her work with the former CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald after many of his employees died in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. The two then shouted over one another, with Mace vocalizing her own alleged experience with sexual violence while Hillary Clinton defended her work as a New York senator around the aftermath of the Twin Towers’ collapse.

“You want to yell at me, that’s fine, but I’ll yell right back,” Mace said. “I’m doing the job that you would not do.”

Clinton seemed bored, if not annoyed, as Republicans took their jabs. She told Mace that the South Carolina Republican would “have a chance to talk to him tomorrow” — a line she said in variations several times in punting the questioning to her husband, who was scheduled to testify the next day.

“How do you feel about your husband being named in the Epstein files?” asked Rep. John McGuire (R-Va.).

“Well, I think it’s something that is unfortunate,” the former secretary of State responded. “And I’m sure that he will tell you that he wished he had not flown on Epstein’s plane.”

Bill Clinton said in his deposition he flew with Epstein on a few occasions as part of official business with the Clinton Global Initiative but never saw anything inappropriate. He also said he stopped traveling with Epstein once closer acquaintances began offering up their planes.

Hillary Clinton, who lost the presidency to Donald Trump in 2016, has maintained her status as a potent GOP foe despite. Throughout much of her political career, those across the aisle have sought to leverage various scandals to undermine her — from the 2012 attack on a U.S. government facility in Benghazi, Libya to her use of a private email server during her government service. She endured an 11-hour hearing in 2015 before a select House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks.

The proceedings also gave Democrats ammunition to undermine the proceedings as partisan and politically motivated, with Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) at one point calling the deposition a “clown show.” But Democrats are also leveraging Trump’s relationship with Epstein for political gain, including by suggesting they could move to subpoena Trump should they take control of the House after the midterm elections.

“Democrats used most of their time to ask President Clinton questions about President Trump,” said a spokesperson for Oversight Republicans in a statement. “In doing so, President Clinton destroyed Democrats’ latest hoax against President Trump by stating twice he has no information that he committed any wrongdoing.”

Trump has not been charged with any crime connected to Epstein and has maintained he severed ties years before the financier’s 2019 arrest on sex trafficking charges.

Hillary and Bill Clinton were both subpoenaed by the Oversight panel as part of its investigation into Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, who is now serving 20 years for her part in the sex trafficking crimes.

Unlike Hillary Clinton, the former president recalled meeting Epstein and recounted to investigators about how his former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who has since resigned from Harvard, connected the two men. Bill Clinton also questioned why his wife was coming in to testify given that she had “nothing to do” with Epstein.

The former first couple were initially reluctant to sit before House lawmakers, saying that the subpoenas were not tied to a legitimate legislative purpose but the process was instead designed to imprison them. With lawmakers threatening to hold them in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate, however, they agreed to sit and answer questions.

Many Republicans asked Clinton questions that were relevant and substantive. House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) inquired about allegations that Epstein may have operated as some kind of spy and whether Epstein’s activity satisfied the requirements for human trafficking — explaining he wanted his panel to work to strengthen human trafficking laws.

In a press conference after the hearing, Clinton commended Comer for his “significant questions.”

But both Clintons, who had at one point said they were eager appear in public hearings, now appear to have no intention of coming back anytime soon.

“Oh, I’m not gonna do it again,” she told reporters after her deposition. “I think they could’ve spent the day more productively.”

Congress

Poll: China fears drive polarization on AI regulations

Published

2 hours ago

September 17, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Americans are divided on whether it’s acceptable to fall behind other countries in the race to develop advanced artificial intelligence. So is Congress.

A new POLITICO Poll finds that Americans broadly recognize serious risks from frontier AI models, but many — particularly President Donald Trump’s voters — also prioritize maintaining a lead over other countries, including China.

Even as 63% of the poll’s respondents said there’s a real possibility that AI could destroy humanity, they’re split on whether it’s acceptable to slow down and potentially fall behind in order to mitigate that risk.

A plurality, 43%, say it is acceptable for the U.S. to fall behind other countries if that means developing AI more responsibly and securely, while 37% take the opposite view, saying the U.S. should not stand down, even if that requires taking risks. Voters who backed Trump in 2024 favor the competition-first position by 50% to 38%.

That split is already playing out on Capitol Hill as AI safety zooms to the center of congressional conversations. With legislation only slowly taking shape, fear of international competition stands to be a major point of tension during any bipartisan negotiations — with most lawmakers’ views divided closely along party lines.

Many Republican lawmakers said in interviews this week that pausing AI development could give China an opening to overtake U.S. capabilities. Democrats are also looking over their shoulders at Chinese advances, but they are cautioning that competition is not a reason for Congress to avoid instituting AI guardrails.

“The AI race is not an arms race that you win,” Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) said during Wednesday’s Blue Light News Decoded Summit. “It’s an arms race that we need to end, and we need to protect the American people.”

Casar, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has teamed up with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in calling for a ban on “superintelligence” to stave off the existential threats to humanity — a concern that bubbled to the fore last week when a former Anthropic researcher warned AI could “kill us all.”

Senior Republicans are denigrating proposals like Casar’s, arguing that the U.S. cannot risk Chinese AI dominance. Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), chair of the powerful House committee overseeing the tech industry, said as much at the summit.

“We absolutely can’t surrender,” he said. “And I think that’s what it would be if we stopped AI development.”

Guthrie further argued AI legislation is too complex to rush and that the Energy and Commerce Committee he leads might not take up AI legislation before next year. That sentiment is in line with Speaker Mike Johnson, who said this week that the U.S. must “maintain our edge over China.” Meanwhile, Trump has called the AI panic a “HOAX” and said that federal regulations would allow China to leapfrog the U.S.

Some Republicans have been almost flippant about the dilemma policymakers face in reconciling a potentially dangerous technology with their fear of Chinese competition.

“If there are going to be killer robots, I’d rather they be American killer robots,” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said in a recent POLITICO interview. Like Guthrie, Cruz chairs a committee overseeing tech matters.

Among the bipartisan group of lawmakers who have locked arms in warning about the Chinese threat on other fronts, the familiar partisan divide is still emerging on AI regulation.

“We can lead in innovation and lead in safety,” said Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.), who sits on the bipartisan Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. “So if Trump or anyone else comes at it that we can only do one but not the other, he’s not looking at the history of the United States of America.”

Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a moderate Republican China hawk, said he is “very reluctant to hinder AI” via regulation.

“They’re going to have to make the good case why we need it,” he said. “We don’t want to hinder our AI research. We can’t afford to fall behind China.”

Some, however, are being careful to strike a balanced tone as the AI safety conversation kicks into high gear.

Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House China panel, acknowledged lawmakers “do have a responsibility for public safety” while saying it was also important to “beat China when it comes to the AI race.”

“There’s economic benefits to that,” he said. “There’s national security issues, but we want to have common sense and a deliberative process.”

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), an Intelligence Committee member and a co-chair of House Democrats’ AI commission, said China is “not waiting for anyone else.”

“So you can’t just leave the race, but you need to make sure you do it in the right way,” he added.

Opinions are sharper when it comes to Trump’s upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping next week and whether he should even broach some type of cooperation on AI safety.

“I don’t trust him,” Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said when asked if Trump should engage with Xi on AI. “I trust Trump.”

But many Democrats say it’s a mistake to engage in an AI arms race, with some explicitly reaching for analogies with the nuclear arms race that ended in Cold War treaties with a former global rival — the Soviet Union — limiting bomb tests and missile deployments.

Rep. Ted Lieu of California, another co-chair of the Democratic AI commission, said Trump could start small by asking Xi to “commit that they’re never going to let AI launch a nuclear weapon by itself.”

“There are things that we can do to get other countries to follow the lead the U.S. has taken in AI,” he said.

Congress

Democrats keep pressure on Hakeem Jeffries to punish rogue members

Published

10 hours ago

September 17, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Democrats aren’t letting rogue members off the hook for bucking their party. They hope Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries won’t either.

“Obviously, there’s got to be” punishment for the two Democrats who twice this month bucked their party to advance a slate of Republican priorities, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said in an interview.

“Otherwise, then,” he said, “it’s open season.”

Democrats are watching closely how — and if — Jeffries doles out consequences for Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington who have twice provided the decisive votes for GOP procedural measures this month. Jeffries and his leadership team condemned the two members when they first defected two weeks ago, slamming a “breach of trust” warranting a “serious response” but have yet to inflict any public consequences.

On Tuesday, they defied leadership a second time, infuriating House Democrats and resurrecting questions about how leadership plans to keep its caucus in line — especially if they have a slim majority next term.

“We have to all be united, and I think it’s pretty simple,” said one House Democrat who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “If there’s not [a punishment], I find it hard to see a path forward in the majority, which we’re all pushing for.”

Asked if leadership should punish the two aisle-crossers, Rep. Troy Carter pointed to his time as minority leader of the Louisiana state Senate: “When I had members that did not work within the confines of the philosophical views of our party, I took them off our caucus.”

“I don’t want to second-guess anybody’s timing, but I will tell you that these things cannot allow to fester,” he added. “We have to have a strict message: Either you’re with the team on those fundamental issues of governance or you aren’t.”

Multiple members, including Carter, said that removing Gluesenkamp Perez from the Appropriations Committee should be considered. (While members are just as angry at Golden, they acknowledge he’s beyond punishment given he is retiring at the end of this term.)

“I suspect that there are a number of appropriate consequences that [leaders] could implement,” Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) said in an interview. “And, ultimately, it’s their decision. I certainly don’t want that to be a caucus decision. That should be a leadership decision.”

One leader, Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, suggested she is open to removing Gluesenkamp Perez from Appropriations, telling reporters Wednesday morning that “team players get to sit on exclusive committees.”

After the first instance where the two Democrats defected on Sept. 1, Jeffries kicked the matter to a caucus rules panel, saying afterward he wanted to pursue action against the two members “sooner rather than later.” The panel continues to deliberate on what should happen if members vote with Republicans on procedural measures.

Jeffries said that week that he’d had a “productive” and “forward-looking” conversation with Gluesenkamp Perez, but he has said much less after Tuesday’s floor drama.

“I’ll have more to say about the issue when I have more to say about the issue,” he told Blue Light News shortly after the vote.

Congress

House passes Russia sanctions bill, handing Trump more leverage against Moscow

Published

12 hours ago

September 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The House passed the sweeping Russia sanctions bill long championed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham on Wednesday, sending the legislation to the White House for President Donald Trump’s signature after more than a year of congressional maneuvering.

The 262 to 159 vote ends a nearly two-year lull in Ukraine assistance from Congress, which had not passed any major Ukraine efforts since a 2024 emergency aid package. The bill faced a number of obstacles on the path to the Resolute Desk, including significant opposition from some House Democrats who argued that the bill would give the White House too much tariff power.

After weathering a number of storms to make it out of Capitol Hill, the legislation is all but guaranteed to get Trump’s signature.

The long-anticipated legislation issues mandatory sanctions on Russia’s leadership and energy sector — as well as new sanctions on collaborators in Moscow’s defense industry and its so-called shadow fleet. Advocates of the bill, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have argued it would give the White House necessary tools to squeeze Russia economically, curbing the flow of funds to Moscow’s war machine.

But, to many Democrats’ dismay, the legislation also includes a 100% tariff on top buyers of Russian energy. Opponents of the bill have cautioned that the tariff provision would hand another cudgel for Trump to use against not only U.S. foes but also global allies — an action the White House has repeatedly taken since Trump returned to office.

“We cannot grant more tariff power that we know he will abuse,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) said in comments on the House floor Wednesday.

Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, argued that the tariffs would worsen the economic pain already felt by everyday Americans and that without a security assistance package or more air defense, they would not do enough to concretely help Ukraine.

In comments on the House floor earlier Wednesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries outlined why he planned to withhold support for the measure.

“The manner in which this bill has been written doesn’t require the president of the United States to impose sanctions on Russia,” Jeffries said. “In fact, there are so many loopholes written into the bill, I believe, that it’s very unlikely that the sanctions relief contemplated in the legislation will ever see the light of day.”

That disagreement has caused a growing rift among Democrats in recent days. Fifty-eight House Democrats broke with Jeffries to vote yes on the measure.

In a letter addressed to House Democrats, Senate Foreign Relations ranking member Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) urged her colleagues to pass the legislation, warning that failing to do so would send a dangerous message to both Russian leader Vladimir Putin and other international foes.

“Congress’s failure to impose additional costs would send a dangerous signal,” Shaheen wrote. “The Kremlin is watching. Kyiv is watching. Our NATO allies are watching. So are Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang.”