Congress
Blue Light News Republican who could get a deal on AI — if his leadership lets him
Tech companies desperately want Congress to pass a federal law this year blocking state rules on artificial intelligence, and many think their best shot lies with California Republican Rep. Jay Obernolte, a former computer engineer now serving his third term in the House.
There’s just one problem: House GOP leaders don’t appear to be listening to him.
AI industry lobbyists have been pushing Capitol Hill for months to pass a bill that would preempt the ability of states to enact AI laws, arguing it would stop a patchwork of conflicting state rules from impeding innovation.
Many see Obernolte, who co-chaired a bipartisan AI task force last Congress and has deep relationships across the aisle, as their greatest hope for action before the end of the year. They say his technical acumen and consensus-building approach on AI will be key to clinching an agreement with Democrats, necessary in a politically polarized Washington.
“If there is anyone in the House who can run point and cobble together the pieces on what meaningful federal AI standards and an AI package could look like, it’s Jay Obernolte,” said Tony Samp, principal AI adviser at lobbying firm DLA Piper, in an interview.
Obernolte is currently working on an AI bill that could pair preemption of state AI laws with a framework to regulate the technology, including new research infrastructure and safety checks on advanced AI models — a compromise that senior AI lobbyists now support after Hill Republicans failed twice last year to unilaterally block state AI regulations.
“You need to codify the federal regulatory framework for AI and, if you don’t do that … essentially you’re saying that there’s no regulation,” said Obernolte in a recent interview. “And I don’t blame people for being uncomfortable with that.”
But four senior tech industry representatives who want a deal, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive legislative talks, said Obernolte’s influence has so far been stifled by GOP leadership, and that he’s been largely absent from high-level Hill negotiations over the future of AI policy.
It’s a sign, they said, that Republican leaders may not be serious about reaching an AI compromise, despite President Donald Trump’s recent call for Congress to come up with a solution to thwart states from freelancing. Both the tech industry representatives and some Democrats instead worry that GOP leaders are refusing to budge on their stance that there should be minimal regulation of the technology — a position shared by some venture capitalists and White House officials.
House GOP leaders publicly insist they’re on the same page with Obernolte and share his goal of drafting consensus legislation that would preempt state AI laws, even as they have so far failed to embrace his ideas and, in fact, appear determined to pursue other tracks.
A spokesperson for House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said that while the Louisiana Republican supports a relatively hands-off approach to AI regulation, “preempting a patchwork of countless varying state laws does not mean no guardrails.”
Nonetheless, Scalise recently expressed skepticism towards any regulations on the sector — a stance that could make a political compromise on AI harder to achieve.
“A lot of these people that want to limit and regulate any industry, a lot of times, what they’re really trying to do is make it hard to do those things in America,” Scalise told reporters in early January. “We should maintain that edge, and we do it by innovating — not by regulating.”
The four tech representatives said they’ve so far seen little to suggest that leadership is interested in Obernolte’s plan for an AI accord. They said he should have been brought into the preemption effort last year, after Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) fell short in his efforts to insert a ban on state AI rules into the GOP’s tax and spending megabill.
They also said Obernolte’s absence from last fall’s unsuccessful push by House leadership to insert a similar provision into the year-end defense bill was unfortunate, largely because it made a compromise tougher to achieve.
“It was a little surprising that one of their best players wasn’t even in the game during the latest push for federal AI standards,” said Samp.
Connor Chapinski, Obernolte’s communications director, downplayed the characterization that Obernolte is being kept away from the GOP’s high-level AI strategy. In a statement, he said Obernolte remains fully engaged with his leadership and the Trump administration around crafting “thoughtful legislation.”
Athina Lawson, a spokesperson for Speaker Mike Johnson, in a statement credited Obernolte’s chairmanship of the task force with giving members “a clearer understanding of how to responsibly leverage the opportunities of artificial intelligence.” She said GOP leadership is coordinating with the Trump administration on AI and plans to “work through committees of jurisdiction to build consensus” among Republicans.
The task force’s 255-page report — released by Obernolte and fellow California Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat, in December 2024 — laid out a slew of findings and policy recommendations related to AI. Yet despite some interest from the tech industry, the panel was not renewed by GOP leadership and its recommendations have gone virtually unheeded.
One senior GOP aide who works on AI policy, granted anonymity to discuss internal GOP strategy, said the report was produced under former President Joe Biden and was “somewhat outdated now that we have a new administration, a new dynamic in Congress.”
A senior Democratic aide who was closely involved with the task force, also granted anonymity to speak candidly, said it has become clear over a period of time that “Mr. Obernolte, for better or worse, had been sort of sidelined … He was like their lead guy on AI, put in a corner.”
Some Democrats are now looking to exploit what they perceive as a leadership gap on AI policy on the other side of the aisle. Lieu now co-chairs a new House Democratic Commission on AI, convened by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) and co-chaired by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (N.J.) and Valerie Foushee (N.C.). In the absence of bipartisan action, they plan to formulate their own plan for regulating the fast-moving technology.
“The White House has led the industry astray, down a bad path,” Lieu said in an interview. “Steve Scalise is very opposed to any kind of legislation at the federal level. … And that’s now resulted in three things the tech industry wanted to avoid, which is, backlash from the public, backlash from bipartisan members of Congress and multiple states regulating their industry.”
Gottheimer, in a recent interview, said, “I think Republicans have certainly ceded the turf.”
There are signs that GOP leaders are starting to feel pressure to legislate on AI. Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan — chair of the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over AI issues like privacy, surveillance and intellectual property — suggested in a Monday interview that “I don’t know about moving anything, but we’re definitely talking about AI.”
Jordan added that one of his staffers had just informed him that his panel should ramp up those discussions.
Gabby Miller contributed to this report.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), one of three co-chairs of the House Democratic Commission on Artificial Intelligence, said Friday he intends to introduce two bipartisan bills that would address surging AI safety concerns.
The New Jersey Democrat — who along with his fellow co-chairs was tapped by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to chart his party’s path on AI — is likely to play a key role in setting the congressional agenda for the technology should Democrats retake control of the House in November’s midterm elections.
At an event held at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Gottheimer announced the American AI Security Act, legislation with Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) that would create a mandatory government review process for advanced AI models ahead of their release. The reviews would be led by the National Security Agency and would last for 30 days, with the possibility for a single 30-day extension.
“Right now, there are no mandatory requirements for pre-deployment testing of frontier AI models,” Gottheimer said. “That doesn’t work in banking, it doesn’t work in food safety, it doesn’t work in medicine and it sure as hell shouldn’t work with the technology that experts say could help build a bioweapon or take down our power grid.”
It’s an echo of Gottheimer’s statement earlier this week, where he poured cold water on OpenAI’s endorsement of a provision in the bipartisan FRONTIER Act that would require third-party safety assessors to be embedded within leading AI firms. He suggested the companies should be forced to go further and submit their models directly to the government for review.
Gottheimer’s plan broadly follows the Trump administration’s existing vetting regime for advanced AI models, which came together in chaotic fashion this summer in response to cybersecurity risks raised by new models from OpenAI and Anthropic. The White House has kept specifics of that process under wraps.
The New Jersey Democrat also pledged to soon introduce the China FIREWALL Act, legislation with Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) that would ban Chinese-developed AI models with open weights from government-issued devices. It would also block federal agencies from procuring software that is reliant on those models.
A perfect storm of affordability issues is developing for Republicans, and they have all but given up on making law to address it before November.
GOP senators’ attempt to fast-track a measure aimed at curtailing high energy bills associated with data centers, which overwhelmingly passed in the House Wednesday, was blocked Thursday.
The bill’s failure — at least for now — joins several last-ditch attempts by lawmakers to tackle affordability concerns this week. And with senators now openly speculating if they’ll cut their work session short before the midterms, and House lawmakers’ early dismissal, some Republicans are showing nerves about the rising cost of living heading into Election Day.
“Enough is enough. Americans are paying more at the pump, and Washington shouldn’t be making it worse,” House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris said in a post on X, hours before his push to temporarily suspend the federal gasoline tax fell apart.
Speaker Mike Johnson threw cold water on that idea, saying his caucus couldn’t rally around any single proposal, despite prices averaging about $4.37 a gallon for regular and $6.31 a gallon for diesel — close to the record high — according to the American Automobile Association.
Meanwhile, seven House Republicans defected from their party this week to rebuke the Iran war launched by President Donald Trump. They included two new votes from Iowa Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn as Midwestern farmers wrestle with soaring fuel and fertilizer price increases due to the conflict.
Democrats are taking the opportunity to hit Republicans on pocketbook concerns.
“Everything is going to become more expensive because Donald ‘I-love-inflation’ Trump is doing everything he can to drive up costs,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said from the chamber floor Thursday.
Some of the country’s economic ails are out of Republicans’ hands on Capitol Hill. The Federal Reserve, for example, just made Republicans’ lives harder, hiking interest rates for the first time in three years and signaling it might do so again this year as inflation continues to tick up.
But while Johnson and GOP leaders say their party is continuing to find solutions to cost-of-living issues, any action can’t happen until after the midterms.
“There’s a lot more work to do, but … it’s easy to forget the mess that we inherited,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said in a Thursday interview. “As much as I’d like gas prices to be lower, they’re lower today than where they were at the peak under [President Joe Biden], and they’re going to get lower when Iran gets resolved.”
What else we’re watching:
— PERMITTING TALKS CLOSE IN: Senators say they’re at the final stages of negotiating long-elusive legislation to ease permitting approvals for energy projects as they race to lock in a floor vote before the November elections. Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said Thursday as senators left town for the week that a deal is “very close,” while ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said negotiations are “in final wrap up, but some of the most difficult issues are the last ones resolved.” Capito conceded that a resolution “may drag” into the third and final week of their work session — which would be a delay from the timeline she and Majority Leader John Thune laid out this week.
— COLLEGE SPORTS BILL KEEPS SENATORS IN TOWN: Opposition to advancing a sweeping college sports bill seems unlikely to derail it, but does threaten to keep senators in Washington past next week for passage. The bill overcame a second procedural hurdle Thursday with a 77-22 vote. But senators are out Monday because of the Yom Kippur holiday and would need unanimous agreement to avoid vote timing bleeding into late Friday night, at the earliest, to finish up work on the bill.
Mia McCarthy and Josh Siegel contributed to this report.
NEW YORK — Not too long ago, Republicans were salivating at the thought of using New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a far-left boogeyman. Instead, moderate Gov. Kathy Hochul has emerged as the GOP’s go-to foil.
As Hochul runs for a second term, Republicans are hoping her middling popularity will be a drag on Democrats in competitive down-ballot races. Some Democratic candidates, meanwhile, are keeping her at arm’s length — a sign they recognize the downside of appearing with a governor often linked to Albany’s reputation for high taxes and lax criminal justice laws.
“There’s not a Democrat in the party in a swing district who wants to be near her,” said a state Democratic official, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Her numbers aren’t as bad as four years ago, but they’re certainly not good.”
The current state of play is one neither party fully planned for. Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist who campaigned on freezing rents and taxing the rich, was supposed to be the Democrat who repelled suburban and upstate voters. Hochul has spent four years trying to be the Democrat who repels no one. Yet outside the city, the socialist is a curiosity and the governor a grievance.
After less than a year in office, Mamdani has amassed high favorability ratings in New York City and a positive perception nationally, while the suburbs ringing the city remain cooler on him. Hochul is being invoked far more broadly. Since casting Mamdani as a socialist neophyte carries less weight farther outside the city, Republicans have fixed their sights more squarely on her as the prime personification of the state’s leftward lurch.
New York, home to a handful of swing districts expected to determine control of the House, remains a high priority for both parties. And the top-of-ticket race between Hochul and Republican nominee Bruce Blakeman stands to impact voter turnout in races beyond their own.
“Outside of the New York City media market, Mamdani doesn’t have the same impact,” said Marc Molinaro, a former House lawmaker and ex-Trump administration official who’s now running for the state Assembly. “Most people further north just don’t have a relationship with the city. They may not love the city, they may not have an attachment to the city, but who do they see? They see the governor.”
On suburban Long Island, former state Assemblymember Mike LiPetri used his first television advertisement of the general election to decry “career politicians like Kathy Hochul and Tom Suozzi who sold us out and left us behind.” The opening screed in Rep. Nick LaLota’s TV spot is that “Kathy Hochul’s taxes are the worst in the nation.” And GOP candidate Anthony Constantino, running to succeed Rep. Elise Stefanik in a blood red upstate district, has accused his Democratic foe Blake Gendebien of being “beaten into submission” by the governor after he pulled a TV ad pledging to stand up to her.
In a statement, Hochul spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki said: “No amount of GOP spin changes the fact that New York Republicans gutted Medicaid, ripped food assistance from families and kids, and enabled Donald Trump, a historically unpopular president, as he tried to defund the NYPD and raised costs on everything from gas to groceries – while Governor Hochul put money back in New Yorkers’ pockets, passed free school meals, and stood up to Trump at every turn. Voters across this state see all of that, and they’re going to send Republicans a message in less than 50 days.”
Republicans are facing a tough midterm election with an unpopular president in the White House. They are trying to weather a political dynamic featuring widespread voter angst over costs, with high interest rates and spiking gas prices emerging as resonant plotlines in the Empire State. Losses in purplish and even red areas of New York would go a long way to costing Republicans the House.
Making Hochul the face of a Democratic Party framed around taxes and crime is meant to counter an otherwise bleak Republican environment and President Donald Trump’s unpopularity here.
But Democrats are casting doubt on how effective such messaging will be — especially compared to the GOP candidates’ association with Trump.
“I don’t think it’s anywhere near as potent as the president of the United States,” said consultant David Carlucci. “It is just a lash out as really one of the few options they have in terms of just playing the blame game.”
Meanwhile, Democrats are trying to thread a delicate needle as the governor seeks a second full term. Some are attempting to separate themselves from Hochul — a dance made all the more awkward as she marshals the resources of the New York Democratic Committee to aid down-ballot candidates.
In the North Country, Gendebien told supporters recently that Hochul is “unpopular” and “underwater” in the district he’s seeking to represent. According to a recording of a Sept. 3 town hall that was obtained by POLITICO, he also acknowledged that he didn’t know why.
Even in races where a high-profile surrogate could be a welcome boost to a relative unknown, the desire for the governor to stump isn’t necessarily strong. When asked if Hochul would be helpful on the trail for him, Mike DeCillis, a long shot Democrat challenging Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, replied: “Probably not.”
The district, a red-leaning seat that covers all of Staten Island and part of Brooklyn, is a “fickle pickle,” he said. “It’s not because of any specific policy. It’s the person they have been kind of trained and told that this is the person they shouldn’t like at all costs.”
Hochul’s zealous push for House Democrats — a years-long project launched after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blamed her weak showing in 2022 for losing down-ballot races — has further raised the stakes in a race that she’s largely expected to win. In 2022, she won by only 6 points.
“We’re going to be the state that sends Hakeem Jeffries to the speaker’s office,” Hochul said in an interview on NY1, highlighting her investment into the state party. She expressed confidence in flipping districts held by Rep. Mike Lawler, Lalota and Stefanik, and holding those represented by Suozzi and Reps. Laura Gillen, Josh Riley, Pat Ryan and John Mannion.
It’s unclear where exactly Hochul will stump for down-ballot candidates in the closing stretch of the election, though an aide said she will be supporting candidates up and down the ballot.
Republicans viewed Mamdani, of all people, to be their primary weapon in the suburbs and upstate, where voters tend to be moderate and more willing to back a Republican. But the mayor, who was viewed favorably by 69% of New York City voters in an August Siena Research Institute poll, has not been the beat-up toy many GOP candidates expected.
New York City mayors, who often bring left-leaning agendas into office, are typically viewed as easy targets for Republicans, especially in rural and suburban House districts. That strategy hasn’t always been effective, in part, because few voters outside the five boroughs consider the city’s mayor to be especially relevant.
“I’ve been asked many times, like, where does upstate and downstate start?” Republican state Sen. Peter Oberacker, who’s challenging Democratic Rep. Josh Riley, said in an interview last month. “You could almost determine where that line is by the concern about Mamdani. … In the more northern reaches of our district, it’s definitely a topic of discussion and concern. But as you come farther downstate, it gets a bit more intense.”
When asked whether the governor or mayor comes up more in discussions with voters, he said the former — and pointed to Hochul allocating $4 billion to help the city’s budget gap. “They feel this way that they’re not getting represented,” he said.
Riley doesn’t view Hochul as much of an issue. He touted her work tackling a dearth of affordable child care. “I’m eager to continue working on that with her,” he said in a statement.
In a state where Democrats hold all levers of power, Hochul is an obvious focal point for Republicans — the embodiment of a deep blue state’s policies on taxes, crime and regulations that drive up utility bills.
She’s tried to reverse that perception. She’s backed measures to scale back a controversial cashless bail law and touted middle-income tax cuts and rebate checks. And she’s embraced popular policies like expanding no-cost child care, banning cellphones in schools and a moratorium on data center construction.
But those policies are more popular than the governor herself.
The Siena survey found 49% of voters hold an unfavorable view of Hochul, with only 46% reporting a favorable opinion. Yet most voters back her efforts to curb Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign and New York’s data center construction pause, which Hochul rolled out this summer. The same poll found Hochul leading Blakeman by 10 points, with the largest chunk of her support coming from the city. She trailed Blakeman in the suburbs by 8 points, and they were nearly tied upstate.
Trump is even more unpopular with New York voters: Only 38% have a favorable view of him. He was slightly above water in the suburbs, but viewed unfavorably upstate and in NYC.
Despite those numbers, some Democratic candidates may not have much of a choice but to accept Hochul’s help.
The governor is using the state Democratic Committee this year to aid down-ballot candidates, opening field offices and providing political infrastructure to support those running in crucial races. This coordinated campaign is a stark departure from prior years when the state party functioned solely as an arm of the governor’s political operation.
The shift began in 2024 and is carrying over into this election year, as Democrats try to hold several seats on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley.
“She absolutely delivered in 2024 on this in a huge way,” said Rep. Pat Ryan, whose seat is not seen as competitive as it was two years ago. “She campaigned a bunch of times for me in that race and across the Hudson Valley and I dramatically outperformed in large part because of a lot of the things that she did. That’s only grown stronger now.”
New York Democrats must win without relying solely on Hochul’s coattails to carry them, though.
Distance themselves too far from the governor, and candidates run the risk of undermining the head of their party set on returning to Albany with a clear mandate for the next four years. Running too close with Hochul opens up swing seat candidates to Republican attacks that they’re the lackeys of a chief executive with so-so polling.
Ryan’s neighboring House member, Lawler, is viewed as one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the country. Earlier this year, he rallied with Trump — not the most popular figure in the district — and said he’d welcome Hochul to campaign for his Democratic opponent Cait Conley “any day of the week.”
In 2024, then-Vice President Kamala Harris narrowly carried the district, as Lawler won reelection.
With that past as prologue in mind, it remains unclear if Conley will appear with Hochul on the trail. But she’s bringing in other reinforcements. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a potential 2028 presidential contender, campaigned with her in the district this week.
Conley has said outright that she does not want to campaign with Mamdani — a calculus that speaks to the independent-minded voters she needs to get on her side. Republicans have sought to tie them together in an attempt to portray her as too far to the left.
Lawler has repeatedly invoked both Mamdani and Hochul on the trail. At times, he’s trained more of his ire at the governor than his actual opponent.
“Their numbers are very similar in the district, and for different reasons and in different ways, they are equally as offensive to most voters in the district,” Lawler said of Hochul and Mamdani.
Still, Hochul’s allies believe it’s an error for Democratic candidates to disassociate themselves from the de facto head of the party. If she wins in November, she’ll continue to wield substantial power.
“I’ve never felt that running away from the head of your ticket is a winning strategy for any party in any year,” New York Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs said. “You make a mistake by distancing yourself from her where she can be helpful.”
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