Congress
The brief but busy reign of Sen. George Helmy is coming to an end
Sen. George Helmy, a New Jersey Democrat, is making his brief tenure at the Capitol a busy one.
Last Monday, Helmy was on the Senate floor to give a complex speech about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The remarks were based on a trip to the Middle East he took during the roughly 12 weeks he’ll be in office after Gov. Phil Murphy picked him to fill disgraced Sen. Bob Menendez’s vacant seat.
The next day, a day after walking the tightrope of Middle Eastern politics, Helmy was back to make joint remarks with Sen. Katie Britt, the Alabama Republican. They are both backing bills to rein in social media companies because of their effects on children’s mental health.
While the two may not agree on much else, she praised the Democrat.
“You hit the ground running, I hope the people of New Jersey and America know that,” Britt said. “This man got to work before Day 1.”
Helmy was sworn in on Sept. 9 and he’s expected to step down soon after election results are certified so Rep. Andy Kim, who won a full term, can fill the remaining days of Menendez’s. It will be one of the shortest-ever tenures in the upper chamber since senators started being directly elected 1913 — with about two dozen former senators sitting less than the roughly 90 days Helmy likely will have, according to the Senate Historical Office.
But Helmy’s hardly been a placeholder or seat warmer.
During his nearly three months in office, Helmy has sat down with 30 or so of his Senate colleagues; sponsored or cosponsored more than 30 pieces of legislation; drawn attention to issues as far-flung as refugees in Gaza and public housing in Atlantic City, New Jersey; and done the constituent casework that remains the bread and butter of a well-run Senate office. And he took an official trip to Jordan, where he saw warehouses stocked with pallets of food and supplies just miles away from starving families, an absurd outcome among other conditions that he said “should appall every one of us.”
“Being one of 100 requires you to raise your voice,” he said in an interview shortly after his floor speech on Gaza.
Other short-term senators have left a mark too. Former Sen. Carte Goodwin, the West Virginia Democrat who was appointed to fill the remainder of Sen. Robert Byrd’s seat in 2010, voted to extend unemployment benefits for more than 2 million Americans and helped confirm Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.
The last senator named to fill a New Jersey seat, Republican Jeffrey Chiesa, voted to confirm Samantha Power as UN ambassador and unsuccessfully sought to build about 350 miles of fencing along the border with Mexico. Chiesa served about two months longer than Helmy will have but, partly because of previous commitments, missed an above-average 15 percent of votes in that time — including one to confirm James Comey as FBI director.
Helmy aims to leave a legislative record that compares to people who have served a full term, or at least get the ball rolling on things that, like the legislation with Britt, may pass in future sessions.
Helmy is also the sole Arab-American in the Senate right now. He said his Gaza speech, indignant over manifold tragedies, aimed to acknowledge complexity by supporting Israel’s existence and self-defense prerogatives, but he condemned blockades that have kept aid from innocent people at death’s door.
“You can say all that because that is true,” he said.
Within minutes of the speech, he said he was getting texts from other senators thanking him.
“That’s what you do, is you raise your voice, you speak the truth and you spur and stir conversation,” he said. “These things matter to people. It’s the old RFK saying — you create these ripples of energy that little by little create massive waves of change.”
His plan from the beginning was to sprint through his time in office with a staff drawn from Menendez’s team, former Sen. Harry Reid’s office and Murphy’s front office, which he once oversaw as the governor’s chief of staff. Back in New Jersey, he was known as Murphy’s hyper-competent top aide and, before that, was state director for Sen. Cory Booker, now New Jersey’s senior senator.
Helmy says he still prefers to be “the guy behind the guy or gal.” So with “senator” in front of his name, he’s acting like a “super staffer” on Blue Light News.
“There’s nobody I’m not willing to talk to,” he said. “I’ll go find senator staffs off the floor and talk to them about what we’re trying to do.”
Adam Hamilton raised $10.6 million in the third quarter of 2026 across his Senate campaign and his joint fundraising committees, his campaign tells Blue Light News, a significant haul for the Kansas Democrat.
The fundraising total illustrates Democrats’ newfound bullishness about flipping a Senate seat in the deep-red state for the first time since 1932.
“This grassroots support sends a clear message: with three weeks until Election Day, Adam Hamilton is building the momentum to win,” said Hamilton campaign spokesperson Tyson Brody.
Hamilton’s third-quarter figure is nearly triple his $3.66 million second-quarter total. His campaign did not provide a current cash-on-hand total.
National Democrats began pumping money into Kansas in recent days, a sign of their growing hopes that Hamilton could win. Last week, Senate Majority PAC — Senate Democrats’ top super PAC — reserved $5 million in television ads backing Hamilton. American Bridge PAC and Lower Costs Now, a new group affiliated with former Vice President Kamala Harris’ super PAC, have spent in Kansas in recent weeks.
Republicans have also flocked to Kansas to prop up Marshall: Senate Leadership Fund, the Senate GOP’s top PAC, has spent or reserved nearly $11 million backing Marshall in the past week, according to tracking firm AdImpact.
“It took us five months to raise $15 million. [Marshall] got it in a day,” Hamilton said at a campaign event in Lawrence, Kansas on Monday. “So please help us.”
Marshall’s campaign has yet to release his third-quarter fundraising totals. As of mid-July, Marshall had over $5 million in the bank to $1.73 million for Hamilton.
A bipartisan Senate duo is urging Trump national security officials to “bring its full capacities to bear” to stave off threats posed by artificial intelligence — sooner rather than later.
Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, and Republican South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, who serves on the Senate Armed Services cybersecurity subcommittee, are calling for a full government response to a growing number of cybersecurity breaches.
“Recent AI security incidents should serve as a warning,” the senators wrote in a Tuesday letter to Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and White House Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios. “Advanced AI agents have escaped testing environments, bypassed safeguards, and gained unauthorized access to real-world systems owned by government agencies and private organizations.”
Spokespeople for Clayton and Kratsios did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Their letter comes as lawmakers struggle to hash out what legislation on AI safety, if any, might look like. Members are currently in recess ahead of the November elections and there’s little hope progress can be made by the year’s end.
But those lawmakers who have been engaged on the topic for years now have mapped out administrative actions the Trump administration could move on now, without waiting on Congress.
The Cantwell and Rounds priorities include: strengthening federal AI safety and security standards at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST; expanding independent testing capabilities at the Center for Advancing Innovation and Standards for Super Intelligence, Department of Energy and the national labs; and working with the tech industry to develop and deploy defensive AI tools.
Specifically, the senators wrote, new NIST standards should address the risks posed by advanced AI capabilities, including the “potential misuse by malicious actors” to conduct sophisticated cyberattacks, automate attacks at scale and agents that threaten external systems and critical infrastructure.
They also said the federal government capacity should be complemented by universities and other research organizations, as well as by private sector, third-party evaluators.
Finally, they point to ways the government could use existing programs at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to work with AI labs to help detect threats and reinforce vulnerable systems.
A bipartisan group of senators urged President Donald Trump to rescind his recent diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, amid bubbling anger on Capitol Hill about Trump’s announcement.
In a letter sent to the White House, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the senators warned that the president’s deal with Russia will not “achieve just ends” or benefit Americans.
“Granting Moscow the ability to sell Russian diesel freely in global markets damages American security interests and is a betrayal of the people of Ukraine, who continue to defend themselves from Putin’s murderous, illegal war,” wrote the lawmakers, led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “This deal is a gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our Allies; it should be rescinded.”
On Sunday, a smaller group of senators called on the president to “immediately reverse course” on the plan in a statement. Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — who signed on to both — said Sunday there may be “a legitimate case for saying the president’s not following the law.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump announced in a social media post on Friday that Russia would “immediately supply” diesel fuel to global markets — including potentially the U.S. — to help relieve high prices driven, in part, by the ongoing war with Iran. Though Trump has repeatedly defended the U.S.’s actions against Iran, on Saturday he demanded an end to Ukrainian drone strikes that have crippled Russian oil refineries that he argues have caused the record-high oil prices.
The senators on Tuesday argued that the deal with Russia will have a “negligible impact” on fuel prices while providing Putin with “more fuel to finance his war machine” as Russia continues its “brutal attacks on Ukrainian civilians.”
The deal with Russia is a sharp pivot from a sweeping sanctions package signed into law last month. That legislation — championed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — was meant to deplete Moscow’s resources by targeting Russian officials, banks and a shadow fleet of oil tankers. It drew widespread bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress.
Senators on Tuesday referenced the package as they condemned Putin as a “tyrant.”
“For decades, America has stood as the bastion of freedom against tyranny, and American presidents have embodied our nation’s resistance to tyrants. Putin is a tyrant,” the letter reads. “Withdraw from this agreement, rescind General License No. 135, and execute the authorities provided under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026. Maintain our legacy – and the duty America holds – as leader of the free world.”
In addition to Blumenthal and Tillis, Tuesday’s letter was signed by Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Dick Durbin (Ill.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Jack Reed (R.I.), and Chris Coons (Del.) and Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Susan Collins (Maine), Alan Armstrong (Okla.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and John Cornyn (Texas).
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