Congress
Ted Lieu, No. 4 Democrat, calls for committee vote on bipartisan AI bill
A key House Democrat involved in developing an artificial intelligence framework for his party called Wednesday for committee consideration of a bipartisan bill to regulate the most advanced AI models — even as he has held off on endorsing it.
Rep. Ted Lieu of California is a co-chair of House Democrats’ AI commission, as well as vice-chair of the House Democratic Caucus. He has previously taken a careful approach to the FRONTIER Act, which is the only comprehensive AI safety legislation that has bipartisan support.
“I absolutely believe that the Energy and Commerce Committee needs to do a markup of that bill, but we’re going to go on vacation in a couple days because that was Speaker Johnson’s choice,” Lieu said at a news conference Wednesday.
It’s the first time Lieu has said that the bill should move forward, explaining that he wants to “support the legislative process” as the commission works to release its own policy recommendations in the coming weeks.
Lieu appeared alongside other Democrats Wednesday, including FRONTIER Act co-author Rep. Lori Trahan of Massachusetts. They gathered to demand Republican leaders facilitate a process for members to come together to discuss an AI regulatory framework amid growing threats that the technology is developing faster than humans can control it.
But Democrats have been divided over whether the answer on AI safety is to put guardrails on the technology or ban certain advancements altogether. They’ve also sparred internally over whether to preempt states from setting their own AI guardrails.
The FRONTIER Act, led by Trahan and Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.), would establish tiered requirements for AI labs that would include independent audits, incident reporting and risk-management frameworks.
Trahan made the case for her bill at the news conference as the product of many meetings with industry and members.
“Incident reporting — that’s mandatory, which by the way, we don’t have today,” she said, saying it would have required transparency around this summer’s hacking incident by a rogue swarm of AI agents: “The only reason why we know about the Hugging Face incident is because OpenAI chose to tell us.”
She responded to concerns from others in her party who say her efforts with Obernolte simply do not go far enough to protect Americans from runaway AI technology, saying it was a meaningful compromise bill that has a path to become law.
“In a perfect world, if I had my way writing that bill, would it look different? Absolutely,” she said. “I chose to legislate in the reality that we’re in right now, which is, we’re going to need this to be bipartisan. If we’re going to pass it tomorrow we will likely need it to be bipartisan.”
Republicans have also been slow to galvanize around the Obernolte-Trahan proposal. In an interview Wednesday during the Blue Light News Decoded Summit in Washington, Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) would not commit to putting the bill up for a markup but gave the bipartisan duo some credit: “Everybody says we need to do something and nobody has put a product on the table except for Jay and Lori.”
Meanwhile, the Democratic AI Commission that is likely to recommend more aggressive controls on frontier models is still working through its process with no defined due date.
“We’re still taking input from stakeholders,” Lieu said, deferring to House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries on timing.
Sen. Ron Johnson is sending a letter Monday requesting a conference meeting to discuss the midterm results and a delay in the leadership election.
Johnson has gathered enough signatures to force the meeting under the Senate GOP’s rules and is proposing the gathering for 9 a.m. Tuesday.
“Tuesday’s result was a stunning defeat,” Johnson and his backers write in the letter to Conference Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO. “Holding leadership elections without engaging in a robust discussion and evaluation of how those running for leadership intend to lead would be political malpractice”
Republicans still expect their leadership election to be held Tuesday, where Majority Leader John Thune is so far unopposed to lead the party next year in the minority.
Sen. Chris Murphy announced Friday that he has been released from the hospital after suffering a stroke last week, but will miss “several weeks” of Senate votes while he continues to recover.
“The doctors are very encouraged by the progress I’ve made so far,” the Connecticut Democrat said in a statement. “In order to take my recovery seriously and get back to work on the quickest timeline possible, I will be spending several weeks at a rehabilitation center after being discharged from the hospital today.”
He added that he remains in touch remotely with his staff and colleagues.
Murphy, who was hospitalized last weekend, said Friday that he was “diagnosed with a small bleed in the thalamus region of my brain.” Jose Suarez, the Chief of Neurosciences Critical Care at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, said in a separate statement released by Murphy’s office that the senator “experienced a small hemorrhagic stroke.”
“He has shown tremendous progress, and at the current rate of improvement, we expect that he will make a full recovery following rehabilitation,” Suarez added.
Murphy is the latest senator to suffer a stroke in recent years. Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) were both hospitalized for strokes in 2022. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), at that time a Senate candidate, also had a stroke in 2022 that he later described as near fatal.
The head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said his group will still be power brokers in a massive Democratic majority in a strategy memo previewing plans for next term.
“While some in the press have speculated that a majority of this size undermines our influence within the caucus, they have it exactly backwards,” Rep. Greg Casar of Texas said in the Friday memo obtained by Blue Light News. “Big majorities are good for getting big things done. Our goal is not to win a battle against other Democratic caucuses. It is to pass longstanding progressive priorities that bring down costs, root out corruption, and boost wages.”
The CPC will have at least 105 members next term, according to the memo. If Democrats had a narrow majority, progressives — and any other faction in the caucus — could have used their votes as leverage. Now that presumptive speaker Hakeem Jeffries will have as many 30 votes to spare, Democrats broadly are recalibrating their approach next term.
Casar laid out a “three-pronged” strategy for the CPC to “wield our power” in the three-page memo — tackling legislation, oversight and “holding Donald Trump to his word on populist economic policies.”
“Small majorities give corporate special interest groups the ability to block popular populist policies by recruiting a small number of opponents; a big majority gives us the advantage,” he said.
Casar previewed how the CPC can engage with Trump, noting that “one of the few bright spots for bipartisan lawmaking” was a housing bill that banned private equity firms from buying homes. He noted the caucus should push Trump to cap credit card interest rates, lower credit card fees for small businesses and lower prescription drug costs.
“While we oppose [Trump] strongly on the vast majority of fronts, we should send bills to his desk that would lower prices and raise paychecks. If he signs them, good. If he vetoes those bills, that will propel us to a continued Democratic majority and a trifecta where a Democratic president can sign these proposals into law,” he said.
Casar also outlined oversight targets beyond the administration, urging Democrats to specifically investigate corporations that use customer data for “surveillance pricing,” health care companies that are “taking advantage of seniors” through the Medicare Advantage program and artificial intelligence labs who are “putting jobs and lives at risk.”
“By focusing not just on the Trump administration but also on big corporations and billionaires, we will show the American people we are not just anti-Trump but also pro-worker and pro-consumer,” he said.
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