Congress

Blue Light News Republican who could get a deal on AI — if his leadership lets him

Published

5 months ago

February 5, 2026

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.

Congress

Moderates beware: Mamdani coalition portends a dramatically different Democratic Party in NYC

Published

1 hour ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

NEW YORK — A coalition powered by Mayor Zohran Mamdani expanded the left’s reach Tuesday, winning younger voters across racial and ethnic lines and once again upending conventional wisdom about elections in New York City.

A series of hotly contested congressional and state elections pit a slate of Mamdani-backed democratic socialists and progressives against establishment candidates who, in several cases, differed little on policy aside from U.S.-Israel relations.

The results were staggering.

Midterm election cycles in deep-blue New York City tend to be sleepy affairs. Both this year and in 2022, just over 500,000 people cast ballots, less than 20 percent of eligible voters. But turnout within a congressional district spanning Upper Manhattan and the Bronx increased by roughly 50 percent between 2022 and Tuesday, with more than 66,000 voters heading to the polls.

In another seat covering parts of Brooklyn and Queens, turnout more than doubled from 2022, though state and federal elections were held on different days that year and the seat was not competitive, which would have reduced the number of voters going to the polls.

Congressional candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America were able to replicate the mayor’s success by winning younger Latino voters in Brooklyn and a majority of Black voters in Harlem. Combined with the DSA’s base in relatively wealthy neighborhoods, the result charted the far left’s broadening appeal and a potential reorientation of the electorate that will influence races for years to come.

“This was a big wave for DSA and they did a good job capitalizing on it,” said Evan Roth Smith, a pollster with Slingshot Strategies. “The question now is: Was this a wave cycle that will abate, or is it the start of the takeover?”

Much of Mamdani’s base is concentrated in the so-called “commie-corridor,” a series of neighborhoods along the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront filled with young, educated and affluent voters who’ve propelled several DSA candidates into office. They went gaga over Mamdani’s candidacy and, as Tuesday’s results show, will turn out for candidates he supports.

The area was crucial to Assemblymember Claire Valdez’s crushing 56-38 defeat of Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.

“The factor that felt most significant to me were all of these New Yorkers who got activated and politicized in the mayor’s race last year who were looking for the next fight,” said Andrew Epstein, a political adviser to Mamdani who worked on Valdez’ campaign. “Those people didn’t go away. And they want to keep going.”

Valdez also won several heavily Latino areas that were expected to break for her opponent.

Reynoso was born in Brooklyn to Dominican parents and just a few years ago was a City Council member representing Bushwick, a long-gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood that’s home to Latino families and young hipsters. Valdez was born in Texas, moved to New York City in 2015 and served in the state Assembly for just one term before launching her Mamdani-backed bid for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat.

She ended up winning areas of Bushwick by even greater margins than the total results — in some election districts winning upwards of 80 percent of the vote.

“You don’t win the district by 35 points if you don’t have broad advantages across age and demographic groups,” said Michael Lange, an election analyst and Mamdani supporter who has tracked several contested races with extreme granularity. “Is she blowing him out of the water with Hispanic voters under 50? I see tons of evidence that the answer is yes.”

The age advantage was the common thread across several other races.

In Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, for example, younger Black voters in Harlem were key to Darializa Avila Chevalier’s win over Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus who had built a small political empire in the district.

While gentrifying, the neighborhood remains a seat of Black political power and is home to younger households who tend to rent. That particular demographic is a strong indicator of why Mamdani won the area in 2025, even as he lost the Black vote overall to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose support was concentrated among older Black homeowners in Brooklyn and Queens.

While Espaillat never healed a rift with the Black community in upper Manhattan opened during his election in 2016, which contributed to his weak performance, Avila Chevalier demonstrated Tuesday that a significant share of voters there were not just supportive of Mamdani the person, but of the broader political movement he’s now leading.

Overall, she edged out Espaillat with Black voters 48-46, according to an analysis from The New York Times, which charted demographic breakdowns for several contested races.

Three winning congressional candidates endorsed by Mamdani — including former city Comptroller Brad Lander in Brooklyn, who unseated incumbent Dan Goldman — share several similarities. They won younger, college-educated and wealthier voters by huge margins, in several cases by 30 points or more, and lost lower-income voters to incumbents or candidates affiliated with incumbents — a sign that the movement seeking to boost struggling New Yorkers has not won them over.

While the DSA was able to win three state races without the support of Mamdani — a testament to the organizing prowess of the left that was essential to reactivating the mayor’s coalition — there were limits to the city’s leftward shift.

Rep. Grace Meng won her reelection race, though she only vanquished challenger Chuck Park by 14 points, an uncomfortable margin for an incumbent of her stature. Park, who ran to Meng’s left, was boosted by a huge turnout in Woodside, Queens, a multiethnic neighborhood that went heavily for Mamdani in last year’s mayoral race.

Elsewhere in the Bronx, however, incumbents remained strong. Rep. Ritchie Torres handily won reelection with 72 percent of the vote, though it was a low-turnout affair more consistent with an uncompetitive midterm. Nevertheless, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries touted the results — even as he watched a series of his endorsed candidates fall to the DSA in Brooklyn, his home borough, in a preview of the intraparty battles to come.

“In some higher-income districts, there was an outsized focus on the Middle East. In other districts, for instance, in the South Bronx, Ritchie Torres ran against somebody who was heavily critical of his position on Israel, and he won by fifty points,” Jeffries told MS NOW on Wednesday.

Congress

Divisive Israel vote to be discussed on Sunday House Democrats call

Published

3 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

An anticipated vote on cutting off U.S. military aid to Israel is among the subjects House Democrats are slated to discuss on an unusual teleconference Sunday evening.

Six people granted anonymity to describe private caucus plans confirmed the member call, which has not been publicly announced. Two of them said it would involve an amendment that would block aid to Israel and other appropriations matters.

Democrats are likely to be sharply divided on an amendment drafted by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to a fiscal 2027 spending bill funding the State Department and foreign aid programs. Massie is proposing to end Israel aid and cut the overall foreign military aide program by $3.3 billion.

House Republicans have not yet announced a vote on that bill, but two other people granted anonymity to describe GOP planning said it is likely to be added to the floor schedule next week. The House Rules Committee voted last week to set up debate on Massie’s amendment.

Senior Democrats want to talk through member concerns and strategy on the Sunday call, according to one of the six people.

The call comes just days after three outspoken critics of U.S. aid to Israel swept hotly contested House primaries in New York City, ousting two incumbents.

Meredith Lee Hill and Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.

Congress

House panel subpoenas Leon Black, escalating tactics in Epstein investigation

Published

4 hours ago

June 26, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Oversight Committee slapped Leon Black with two subpoenas in the middle of his transcribed interview about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein — after Black refused to answer questions about potential non-disclosure agreements he had with women tied to the late, convicted sex offender.

Oversight Committee Chair James Comer announced the issuance of the subpoenas — for the NDAs and for Black to reappear for a formal deposition July 16 — after the first hour of Black’s interview had concluded with the billionaire investor insisting he would not discuss the terms of those agreements.

Black had initially agreed to appear voluntarily, but under the terms of a deposition, his testimony will be videotaped and under oath.

“We believe that information is vital to our investigation,” Comer, a Kentucky Republican, told reporters Friday. “We want to know, was Jeffrey Epstein involved in the NDAs? … Was he involved in awarding [of] funds to the women for the NDAs? What was the reason for the NDAs?”

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the panel, seconded Comer’s decision to force a deposition to compel information that he also described as central to the panel’s ongoing Epstein probe — a rare moment of bipartisanship in an investigation that has been plagued by partisan bickering.

“There’s no question that as soon as this interview started, that the witness was not going to answer critical questions,” he told reporters.

After Black had already departed from the closed-door interview, his lawyer, Susan Estrich, said that Epstein “had no involvement with any NDAs, whether they exist or not,” and said her client has never abused a woman.

“They made a premeditated political decision to serve him with subpoenas after less than an hour of questioning, and before they even asked a single question about his legitimate payments to Epstein,” she said, referring to members of the Oversight panel. “This was nothing more than a planned political stunt.”

Estrich represented the late Fox News chairman Roger Ailes when he was facing sexual misconduct accusations. Black has also battled his own allegations of sexual assault, though he has denied the accusations — along with having had knowledge of Epstein’s wrongdoing over the course of their relationship.

Several Democrats who attended the interview were aghast at Black’s lack of cooperation. Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico told reporters that more than one of Epstein’s accusers had previously accused Black of committing sexual misconduct against them, too.

“Before Mr. Black left the interview, he admitted that he lived close to Epstein,” Stansbury said. “He often dined at his house. He went over for breakfast, for happy hours, attended impromptu dinners with world leaders, with academics, with scientists.”

Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) alleged that Black “gush[ed] poetically about how smart and how great Jeffrey Epstein was” and accused him of walking out on the committee.

The bipartisan desire to get more information from Black comes as the committee’s Epstein investigation is set to hit the one-year mark in July, after Oversight Committee Democrats — frustrated with the Justice Department’s refusal to release the so-called Epstein files — forced a bipartisan vote to facilitate the publication of relevant materials.

That vote jumpstarted a congressional probe that has led to interviews with more than a dozen witnesses, including ex-Attorney General Pam Bondi, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates.

Comer has also asked acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to speak with his panel in the coming weeks, after Bondi accused him of being at the tip of the spear in overseeing the eventual release of the Epstein files in compliance with a law Congress passed in December.

Members will have more to ask Blanche following the Justice Department’s admission on Thursday that the DOJ had been violating the law Congress passed last November requiring the public release of the vast majority of government records relating to Epstein.

A federal judge gave Blanche one week to release certain names and other information that DOJ initially redacted from the millions of pages of the Epstein files — or provide a more detailed explanation for withholding them.

Critics believe the department has been seeking to protect powerful people implicated in Epstein’s crimes — including potentially President Donald Trump, who has not been charged with wrongdoing and has denied misconduct.