Congress
Schumer rolls out Democrats’ midterm energy pitch
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer rolled out an energy and climate change agenda Wednesday as a preview of what Democrats have in store if they take the chamber’s majority in November’s elections.
Schumer’s five-point plan seeks to ride the national momentum on affordability, framing Democrats as the party not just of clean energy and fighting climate change, but of lower electricity bills and more jobs.
It touches on some longtime Democratic priorities — like bringing back the Inflation Reduction Act clean energy tax incentives that President Donald Trump and Republicans rolled back last year — and easing permitting hurdles for wind, solar and other zero-emissions energy sources.
“We can bring new voters and allies into the fight for a cleaner environment by showing how clean energy is affordable energy,” Schumer said.
“With this new expanded coalition, putting us back in the majority, we have an opportunity to put forward new policy solutions, strong policy solutions, that tell the American people we can both lower costs and make real progress on climate change,” he continued.
Schumer presented the plan at the League of Conservation Voters’ annual Capital Dinner, gathering hundreds of donors, lawmakers, environmental staff and others.
The group, long a major Democratic ally, is one of the nation’s top election spenders, and is poised to be a major part of Democrats’ attempts to recover from their 2024 losses.
Clean energy, Schumer said, is “the cheapest and fastest way to add energy to the grid, and reduces our emissions at the same time.”
The Democrats’ plan seeks to build out more electricity transmission and storage, make sure data centers pay their fair share for energy, and better protect consumers from electricity bill increases.
While many of the pillars are longtime priorities on the left, Schumer emphasized some new priorities. The plan puts geothermal and nuclear energy, including fusion, on a similar level to renewables like wind and solar.
Schumer is also promising “a thorough re-examination of the entire structure and incentives within our energy systems … to prioritize lowering costs,” and new efforts to make electricity bills “easier to understand.”
While Democrats have been engaging with Republicans toward bipartisan permitting legislation for all forms of energy, Schumer presented a more partisan permitting concept in his speech.
“Democrats will provide legislative certainty for clean energy projects, so that workers and investors can rebuild the clean energy project ecosystem that Trump has destroyed,” he said, adding that permitting legislation “never, never must come at the expense of our obligation to protect local communities and safeguard the environment.”
Democrats have not been particularly vocal on climate change in their drive to take the Senate and House majorities, as they reexamine the issue’s palatability with voters. Schumer’s rollout shows at least some willingness to focus on climate, but keeps the party’s priority on affordability.
Democrats currently hold 47 of the Senate’s seats, so they would need a net gain of four seats to get the majority. The party is focusing on candidates like former Gov. Roy Cooper in North Carolina, Gov. Janet Mills in Maine and former Rep. Mary Peltola in Alaska to get there, but it’s an uphill battle.
The party has also taken recent steps to push its energy agenda in the Senate. Earlier Tuesday, Democrats forced a vote on a resolution that sought to undo Trump’s implementation of clean energy tax policies. More such resolutions are forthcoming.
President Donald Trump nominated Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) to be the next U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia on Monday, part of a spate of nominations sent to the Senate less than two months before the midterms decides the fate of the GOP’s control of the chamber.
Hunt, one of the first Black Republicans to represent Texas in the House, was one of three Republican candidates locked in a fierce battle for a Senate seat in Texas earlier this year.
Trump held off on endorsing a candidate in the initial primary but backed state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the runoff. Hunt pitched himself as a staunch Trump ally in that race and quickly endorsed Paxton — the eventual winner — once Trump signaled his favorite.
The ambassadorship was last held by Michael Ratney, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden and served in the position until January 2025.
Trump has long made relations with Saudi Arabia a priority, welcoming Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the White House in 2025 and striking deals with the kingdom. But the nomination comes as tensions between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Houthis has reignited and the war in Iran has caused disruptions in its ability to export oil.
The other 40 nominations sent Monday to the Senate include some that Trump had previously announced on social media, including Heidi Overton as the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and Hung Cao as the next Navy secretary.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Monday for immediate congressional action to regulate artificial intelligence — his most urgent call to date for guardrails on the rapidly advancing technology amid warnings it could eradicate humanity if left unchecked.
“The explosive growth of artificial intelligence and the challenges that are therein presented — that’s not a hoax,” Jeffries said at his weekly news conference. “It’s very real, despite what Donald Trump has to say about that issue as well, and it requires decisive congressional action immediately, in a manner consistent with what some of the leading AI voices in the country are now saying needs to happen, as it relates to slowing things down to protect the health, the safety and the well-being of the American people.”
Jeffries’ call for regulation comes days after an ex-Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, warned that AI could “kill us all,” prompting calls from the company’s CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI CEO Elon Musk for an AI development slowdown. Trump has responded by downplaying the risks and doubling down in his support for accelerating AI breakthroughs to compete with China.
Jeffries urged Speaker Mike Johnson Monday to keep Congress in session “until something is done decisively to protect the safety and the well-being of the American people, in the face of growing concerns being raised by experts within the artificial intelligence industry itself.”
Johnson canceled the last two weeks of session before the midterms, meaning that the House is slated to leave Capitol Hill on Thursday and not return until Nov. 9. The speaker has given no indication he will revisit this plan and has remained noncommittal on whether the chamber will consider AI safety legislation ahead of the elections, if at all.
Jeffries also said the Democrat-only AI commission he convened this Congress could begin rolling out its policy recommendations soon, noting he plans to meet with the group’s three co-chairs this week. And he blamed Johnson for declining to reconstitute a bipartisan AI task force that would have allowed members of both parties to work together on the issue.
“We want to ensure that American entrepreneurs and companies can continue to lead in this space and not be overcome by the Chinese Communist Party,” Jeffries said of what the Democratic-led commission has been working on. “But on the other hand, we’ve got to ensure that the American people actually experience the benefits of artificial intelligence without being subjected to the very real, and very grave and very dangerous downsides.”
But while Jeffries is positioning Democrats as leaders on AI policy — now and in the next Congress — he declined to endorse a proposal from some of his colleagues to create a select AI committee if the party wins the majority in November.
“We’re focused on the substance, not the process,” he said, adding that any select committee discussions would take place after election day.
Jeffries did endorse the Ratepayer Protection Act — a bipartisan bill intended to shield Americans from energy costs associated with the data center boom — which is slated for a vote Tuesday.
“It’s a step forward,” he said. “More clearly needs to be done.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday he sees a role for Congress in regulating artificial intelligence — albeit with a “light touch.”
Thune’s comments, made to reporters in the Capitol as President Donald Trump publicly railed against regulating frontier AI models, are the first he’s made since industry insiders sounded alarm bells about the technology’s potentially catastrophic impacts on humanity.
“It needs to strike a balance, light touch. You don’t want to stifle innovation, but I think you also want to make sure that the more advanced threats can be mitigated, and there’s a capability in place to do that,” Thune said.
He added that he believed Congress could put “guardrails around those types of more consequential threats without in any way harming our ability to stay ahead in the AI race.”
Thune introduced an AI safety bill with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in 2023 and is negotiating a revised version that he said Monday “reflects the approach” he is advocating. Thune said he spoke with Klobuchar over the weekend about the revised bill, which is also being negotiated with Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and expressed hopes it would be finalized “hopefully soon” and that they can “get a path forward for it.”
Cruz previously told Blue Light News that he could hold a committee vote on AI legislation before the chamber adjourns ahead of the midterm elections — perhaps as soon as the end of next week.
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