Congress
Some Democrats plan boycott of Trump’s State of the Union
A slate of Democrats plan to skip President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address to Congress next week and instead will attend a counterprogramming event on the National Mall that same evening.
The rally, dubbed the “People’s State of the Union,” will include lawmakers who skipped Trump’s first and second inaugurations, underscoring a small but consistent block of Democrats who continue to opt out of the president’s most high-profile events.
Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Reps. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), Becca Balint (D-Vt.), Greg Casar (D-Texas), Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.) are expected to join the rally, organizers said Wednesday.
“These aren’t normal times and showing up for this speech puts a veneer of legitimacy on the corruption and lawlessness that has defined his second term,” Murphy said in a statement.
Ansari, who walked out of Trump’s address to Congress last year, said the rally continues her earlier protest.
“Americans deserve an honest account of the state of our union,” she said.
She said she plans to bring in a guest who was targeted by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
The liberal group MoveOn is hosting the rally alongside other organizations, including the popular Democratic-aligned podcasting and media network MeidasTouch.
The White House dismissed the boycott, saying Democrats have routinely worked to thwart the administration’s policy goals.
“It’s not a surprise that they refuse to celebrate and honor the Americans who have benefited from the commonsense policies Republicans have governed with,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson.
Democrats have boycotted a series of Trump’s biggest moments throughout both of his terms. Of the dozens of House Democrats who skipped Trump’s first inauguration, 31 were still in Congress and seven chose to attend his second one, signaling a faded resistance from the first Trump era.
Trump is set to deliver his address Tuesday night, even as a partial government shutdown continues, prompting concerns from some senior Hill Republicans and White House officials about the optics.
But Republicans also see the address as an opportunity to shift the focus away from mounting negative headlines — including fatal shootings by federal immigration agents in Minnesota and scrutiny over the release of the Epstein files — and instead bolster its economic messaging ahead of the midterms.
The bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus launched a working group to address artificial intelligence and other evolving technologies, the group announced Thursday.
The working group comes as Congress grapples with public alarm over the growing capabilities of AI and claims it could doom humanity, and the need to advance the powerful technology faster than China.
The new group is meant to toe the line between safety and development.
The group will be co-chaired by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), who also co-chairs Democrats’ AI commission.
“One thing is clear: getting AI policy right is critical to our future — to American children, families, our national security, and our global competitiveness,” Gottheimer said in a statement. “We can win the AI race — but we must do it in a smart way with commonsense guardrails and rules of the road.”
“Artificial intelligence is transforming our economy, workforce, and national security, and the United States must lead, not China,” Lawler added. “We need commonsense guardrails that protect Americans, empower workers and small businesses, and ensure AI remains secure, transparent, and trustworthy.”
Reps. Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.) and Blake Moore (R-Utah) will serve as the group’s vice chairs, with Reps. David Joyce (R-Ohio), Susie Lee (D-Nev.), Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.), Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), Tom Kean (R-N.J.), Angie Craig (D-Minn.), Maria Salazar (R-Fla.) and Scott Peters (D-Calif.) rounding out the body.
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) forcefully pushed back against President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda in a campaign ad released on Thursday, a rare rebuke of the White House’s aggressive immigration policy from inside the Republican Party.
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” she told Trump in a straight-to-camera video that is airing on television in the Miami market, according to the ad tracking firm AdImpact.
The criticism from Salazar, who represents a red-leaning district based in Miami-Dade County, comes with Republicans increasingly worried that concerns over the economy and the president’s immigration crackdown will roll back gains the party made with Hispanic voters in the general election two years ago.
Trump’s strong rhetoric on immigration helped propel him to the White House in 2024. But he’s seen his standing on the issue drop massively in the wake of an ill-fated surge of immigration enforcement into Minneapolis last winter that resulted in the deaths of two American protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Even as the White House has sought to dampen public criticism of its mass deportation campaign, just a fourth of Trump’s 2024 voters told a POLITICO poll in August that the president’s push has been too aggressive, numbers that roughly matched totals from January and April polls.
“Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy,” Salazar said in the ad. “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
She also released a similar ad in Spanish.
Trump endorsed Salazar in February. But the three-term lawmaker, whose district is dominated by Latino voters, has not thrown her full support behind him on immigration. Still, Eliott Rodriguez, her Democratic opponent in the November election, has said she has failed to stand up to the president.
Salazar’s seat is not considered among the core battlegrounds in November; Trump won the district — which was only nominally reshaped during Florida’s recent gerrymander — by more than 14 points in 2024, according to calculations from The Downballot. But her Democratic challenger has recently circulated internal polling showing the race as a tossup.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Americans — and Congress — are divided on whether it’s acceptable to fall behind other countries in the race to develop advanced artificial intelligence.
And that fear of international competition is emerging as a key point of tension slowing down any path to AI safety legislation.
Even as almost two thirds of respondents in a new Blue Light News poll 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 other countries like China in an AI arms race.
A plurality, 43 percent, say it is okay for the U.S. to fall behind if that means developing AI more responsibly and securely, while 37 percent take the opposite view. Voters who backed Donald Trump in 2024 favor the competition-first position by 50 percent compared to just 34 percent of Kamala Harris voters.
Republican Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie argued the U.S. cannot risk Chinese AI dominance, and that AI legislation is too complex to rush — even if that means pushing off until next year consideration of a measure by his panel.
“We absolutely can’t surrender,” he said Wednesday at Blue Light News’s Decoded Summit.
Meanwhile, the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said competition isn’t a reason to avoid guardrails.
“The AI race is not an arms race that you win,” Rep. Greg Casar said at the Decoded Summit.
Other lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are trying to strike a balance. Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, 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.”
Still, the emerging divisions spotlight a long road ahead for any consensus from Congress.
An attempt to quickly pass a bill requiring companies to build a “kill switch” into their AI models from Republican Sen. John Kennedy was blocked Wednesday by Sen. Rand Paul on the chamber’s floor.
And while Guthrie’s Senate counterpart, Commerce Chair Ted Cruz said Wednesday his hope was still to mark up this month a bipartisan AI safety bill from Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, lawmakers haven’t reached agreement to finalize the measure. Thune himself said Wednesday he was unsure it would happen before the midterms.
Cracks are also starting to show among the leading AI companies on what role they want Congress to play.
One example: Anthropic’s policy chief Sarah Heck declined at Blue Light News’s summit to endorse a proposal for congressionally mandated independent AI monitoring — a day after competitor OpenAI endorsed it. The proposal is a key provision in Reps. Jay Obernolte and Lori Trahan’s bipartisan AI safety measure.
The House’s early dismissal Wednesday only added to time pressure on lawmakers, who will return to a lame duck session with an already full calendar.
What else we’re watching:
— LEE BULLISH ON PERMITTING: Energy and Natural Resources Chair Mike Lee told fellow Republicans during a closed-door lunch Wednesday he is “guardedly optimistic” that negotiators will reach a long-sought deal on a bill to ease permitting approval for energy projects. “We were told today that the Democrats are going to agree to a permitting bill, and it’s going to be drafted and ready for us to vote on,” Kennedy said in an interview. Still, the top negotiators have yet to clinch an agreement, meaning the timeline could slip until after the midterms.
— SPY LAW TIMING UNCLEAR: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently warnedCongress that if it doesn’t vote on a controversial surveillance law by Nov. 20, the program could go dark, but it’s unclear congressional leadership can meet that deadline. Thune told reporters this week that there is an “interest” in trying to get Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reauthorized, but didn’t commit to getting a vote before the midterms. With the House gone, reauthorization will wait until at least mid-November, regardless.
Riley Rogerson, Mia McCarthy, Anna Wiederkehr, Jordain Carney, John Sakellariadis and Josh Siegel contributed to this report.
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