Congress
The MAHA revolt threatening the farm bill
Republican infighting between two important constituencies — the agriculture sector and the MAHA coalition — is threatening passage of a bill leaders are counting on to help woo rural voters ahead of the midterms.
House GOP leaders hope this week to advance a long-stalled farm bill that would secure a slew of industry and rural investments. They see a political incentive to move quickly now to shore up farm country support in advance of the November elections, plus heed calls from President Donald Trump to “PASS THE FARM BILL, NOW!”
The farm bill traditionally comes to the floor with bipartisan support. But House Democrats this time are largely opposed to the package because it does not reverse the massive cuts to the country’s largest food aid program enacted by last year’s GOP megabill. That’s putting extra under pressure on Republicans to see it over the finish line amid intraparty disagreements over provisions related to pesticides, livestock laws and ethanol sales.
The biggest source of conflict is over a provision that would shield pesticide makers — a powerful lobbying force with agriculture state Republicans — from lawsuits. It comes as the Trump administration has also moved to protect access to a key pesticide after chemical manufacturers told the White House they were concerned about regulatory uncertainty or MAHA-driven crackdowns. Removing the measure would stoke backlash from Trump officials and farm state Republicans.
MAHA activists feel betrayed after voting for Trump in hopes that his administration would crack down on chemical exposure they blame for driving up chronic illness and disease. And now these activists are so fed up that they’ve turned to working with a group of House Democrats to strip out the language, according to four people granted anonymity to share private discussions.
Several Republicans who wield enormous power in Speaker Mike Johnson’s razor-thin majority could try to tank the entire bill If the provision isn’t removed.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), one of the main Republicans opposed to the pesticide provision, said she opposes the farm bill in its current form. Her biggest concern? “Glyphosate,” she said, referring to the widely used chemical weed killer targeted by MAHA.
Most Republicans don’t think the pocket of bipartisan opposition to the pesticide provision will be successful, arguing that the bill clarifies labeling rules and national standards for pesticides and herbicides used by farmers.
House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) said during the bill’s markup the provision is “critical for securing access to the well-regulated pesticide tools” in line with Republicans’ focus on food affordability ahead of the midterms.
Even Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said in an interview that he plans to vote for the final bill despite his concerns about the pesticide language, because it includes a pilot project allowing small meat processors to bypass federal USDA inspections and sell directly to consumers.
But the Kentucky Republican is still pushing to strip out the pesticide measure, arguing that the “government is under siege” by chemical company lobbyists. And further inflaming tensions and drawing attention to divisions is that the farm bill will hit the floor the same week the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in a high-profile case on whether the maker of glyphosate-based Roundup should be preempted from failure-to-warn claims for cancer risks from pesticide use.
Massie and Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) are scheduled to be among a group of speakers at a MAHA-organized rally — advertised as “The People vs. Poison” — outside the Supreme Court Monday morning.
Pingree, who has fought for years against Republicans efforts to pass similar language, has co-sponsored a bipartisan amendment to remove the pesticide language from this year’s farm bill.
“It’s good that there are Republicans on there, and one of the reasons we wanted to be sure it was bipartisan is because they’re more likely to be in a position to pressure the Rules Committee members and the chair,” Pingree said of her amendment.
Pingree’s is among hundreds of amendments House Republican leaders will need to wade through when the Rules Committee meets Monday afternoon to pave the way for floor consideration of the farm bill. Johnson and his leadership team have been working to stave off amendment votes in relation to other bills. But they may need to allow some on the farm package to, at the very least, guarantee adoption of a party-line procedural rule vote necessary to get onto the underlying measure.
Luna, the MAHA-aligned Republican, said in an interview that leaders haven’t committed to allowing a floor vote on her amendment to strip out the pesticide measure.
Pennsylvania GOP Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Ryan Mackenzie, and Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Nancy Mace of South Carolina have all introduced amendments to strip parts of or all pesticide provisions in the bill.
The farm bill is also in peril over a provision that would undo state-level guidelines on livestock sales — specifically a California ballot initiative governing pig confinement that pork producers have argued hurts their bottom lines and created regulatory inconsistencies across states.
Luna and other Republican supporters, including Mace and Reps. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey and Andrew Garbarino and Mike Lawler of New York, say reversing the referendum would undermine states’ abilities to govern agricultural practices within their own borders.
Another policy fight — allowing year-round sales of higher blends of ethanol at the gas pump — could throw a wrench into farm bill passage plans, too. Biofuels backers and agriculture groups are lobbying members to include a bipartisan E15 amendment in the legislation, with fuel prices spike from the Iran war adding further pressure to find a solution that might bring down prices for consumers.
But GOP leaders would need to grant a waiver to be able to include such an amendment in the bill, since the issue falls outside the House Agriculture Committee’s jurisdiction. And lawmakers who represent small, independent refiners would also oppose the proposal and may vote against the whole package over it.
In the meantime, Thompson is doing a hard sell, saying in an interview that the legislation would be a “real morale boost” that would increase farmers’ borrowing capabilities and modernize programs through the Agriculture Department that haven’t been updated since 2018.
During a closed-door meeting last week, Thompson also pitched GOP hard-liners who regularly oppose the farm bill to support it this time, arguing that the direct farm subsidies they are most opposed to are not included because Republicans approved billions of dollars in new spending to bolster the so-called farm safety net as part of last year’s megabill.
Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), who was the chair of the Agriculture Committee when Congress passed the 2014 farm bill, told reporters recently that lawmakers should avoid delaying the farm bill another year: The legislation hasn’t been updated since 2018 and was due to be reauthorized in 2023.
“You don’t want to roll this over into a brand new Congress,” Lucas warned “The issues that are entailed here are not that complicated. There’s some controversial things … many of those things, ultimately, in this process, fall out. That’s just the nature of the way things happen.”
Members of Congress are confronting a grim reality: They are ill-equipped to rein in advanced artificial intelligence that one expert warns could “kill us all” by the end of the decade.
A viral social media post this week from ex-Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon cautioned that AI companies are “gambling with our lives” as they race to develop superintelligent models — prompting alarm from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and new calls to action.
In conversations with Blue Light News throughout the day Wednesday, more than a dozen lawmakers and aides from both parties said they were hopeful Congress would start taking the issue seriously. By Wednesday evening, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, was pledging to “work with Congress” to implement “mandatory, capability-based national AI safety regulation.”
But many also conceded that Congress is currently sleepwalking into a crisis, far from ready to tackle the stakes of the moment in light of both philosophical differences and intractable partisan politicking.
“I think we’re finally hitting a tipping point,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who co-chairs the House AI Caucus, said in an interview. “I’m just so grateful that the whole world is finally paying attention … and now the question is, what do we do?”
Mounting worries inside the tech industry about a looming AI apocalypse are beginning to resonate with more members of Congress. Building on the panic seven weeks ago when hundreds of OpenAI-generated “agents” went rogue and hacked another AI platform, Hugging Face, lawmakers Wednesday called for radical action in the immediate aftermath of Coxon’s X posts late Tuesday night.
“There’s broad consensus — and in speaking with the AI companies directly, they want a regulatory framework,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), a vulnerable moderate incumbent who has introduced bipartisan AI safety legislation, said Wednesday.
He called it “one of the biggest issues that Congress has to tackle over the next two years.”
It’s far from certain this desire to make progress on the issue will translate into meaningful legislative activity — and certainly not before the end of the year, with some lawmakers questioning whether their colleagues take the matter seriously or fully understand how the technology even works.
Democratic Rep. Sam Liccardo of California, who leads AI policy for the centrist New Democrat Coalition, said in an interview his team recently struggled to convince other members to attend a series of events at the Library of Congress that featured OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
“There have been serious conversations among a small number of us, and we need that number to be larger. There is a percentage of my colleagues who are still trying to spell AI,” Liccardo said, adding, “we need to dramatically increase the base knowledge of Congress if we’re going to legislate meaningfully. And I know that is not going to happen overnight.”
Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas), who introduced a bill this summer to create an AI “kill switch” with Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), said in an interview he thought efforts to put checks on advanced models would be a priority in the next Congress. Quicker action, he agreed, would be a heavy lift.
“The number of days that we have left between the election and the end of the year is going to be very tough to educate members and then move a meaningful bill,” he said. “The broad scope of members on both sides of the aisle are trying to get caught up.”
There’s also not yet consensus on the appropriate reaction and policy response to the threat posed by superintelligence. No committee in either chamber has considered a substantive proposal to put guardrails on AI development amid disagreements over how aggressive the federal government should be in regulating the private sector and stifling innovation.
Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who convened a markup of AI-adjacent bills in August that steered clear of addressing safety regulations, said in an appearance on ABC’s “The View” Wednesday that the new warnings were “highly concerning” and endorsed passing legislation to prevent “catastrophic risk.”
He pointed to a pending bipartisan bill from Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) that is expected to represent a more targeted approach than a version of the legislation that advanced out of the Commerce Committee in the previous Congress.
Klobuchar and Thune, however, have provided no timetable for when their new measure might be formally introduced. Thune’s office did not respond to a request for comment, while Klobuchar in a statement said only that she would “continue to work toward a bipartisan agreement on legislation for commonsense guardrails to address the risks posed by AI systems,” while adding, “it’s clear we need to act now and not wait.”
Across the Capitol, House Democrats made especially clear in the aftermath of Coxon’s X posts that they will seek to move quickly if they win the majority in November, with some now discussing whether to establish a select committee on AI.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries convened a Democrat-only AI commission this term to formulate policy recommendations after Speaker Mike Johnson declined to reconstitute a bipartisan AI taskforce, and co-chair Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) projected confidence Wednesday the group’s forthcoming report would pave the way for meaningful legislative action on AI safety.
Passing AI safety legislation will require buy-in from Republicans, however — and Gottheimer, asked if Congress is moving fast enough, blamed GOP leaders for lack of momentum.
“What you’re really asking me is if the Republican leadership is working fast enough on this, right? Because they’re the ones who control the agenda,” he said. “I think you’ve seen a lot of action out of members of Congress. I think our commission has been incredibly active.”
Other Democrats joined Gottheimer in blaming Republicans for slow-walking legislation.
“It only would take one phone call from the speaker to say, ‘I want five Democrats and five Republicans in a room, and I want them to emerge from that room next week with legislation that we can bring to committee and then bring to the floor,’” said Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “That’s it.”
Spokespeople for Johnson and Jeffries did not return requests for comment.
Even if Democrats take back gavels after the midterms, they, too, lack a clear plan to address the growing threat of unchecked AI. Progressive leaders, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), are advocating for a ban on superintelligence — a proposal that more moderate Democrats claim has no viable path to passage.
“Bernie Sanders,” said Gottheimer, “wants to put it in the box and throw it away, but that’s not living in reality. I think we need a reasonable, smart, commonsense approach that’s realistic but also sets up mandatory rules of the road — legislative rules of the road.”
Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) brokered a bipartisan safety bill with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) that the two lawmakers have pitched as a consensus proposal, but it has so far failed to win the support to advance.
“You cannot just put your head in the sand on AI and say, ‘I hope it works out.’ You can’t just go in and say, ‘Government’s got the solution — they’re just going to ban it all.’ That’s just not going to work,’” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a staunch conservative who is leaving Congress at the end of the year, said in an interview. “We’re going to have to be thoughtful as leaders and actually have some friggin’ leadership.”
Owen Dahlkamp, Gabby Miller, Katherine Long, Mia McCarthy and Alex Gangitano contributed to this report.
Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.) plans to seek the top GOP spot on the Judiciary Committee, a spokesperson said. The announcement came soon after POLITICO reported that the current chair, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), does not intend to seek a fourth term leading Republicans on the panel. Lee, who is seeking her third term in November, is well down the committee’s seniority list but could make a case to the House GOP steering committee that she is best equipped to lead the key panel as a former state judge.
DALLAS — Rep. Jim Jordan said Wednesday he plans to end his eight-year run leading Republicans on two of the House’s most prominent committees after this Congress, raising fresh questions about what comes next for the veteran Ohio lawmaker.
Jordan, 62, said in an interview on the sidelines of the Republican midterm convention that he has no plans to seek a waiver of the GOP’s three-term limit on committee leaders to retain the top spot on the Judiciary Committee.
Nor, he said, would he seek to return to lead Republicans on the House Oversight Committee. He previously served as ranking member from 2019 to 2020, when he took the GOP reins at Judiciary, and has at least two terms of eligibility remaining there.
“No, I don’t plan to do that,” Jordan said. “There’s other people who are very interested in Oversight.”
Jordan could have requested a waiver from the House Republican Steering Committee, and several other sitting GOP chairs — including Agriculture’s G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) and Armed Services’ Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) — are expected to do just that. He brushed off questions about why we would not join others in seeking to keep the coveted gavel overseeing the Justice Department, immigration law and other high-profile matters.
“I’m just not going to do it,” he said.
The decision is likely to stoke speculation about another potential leadership run for Jordan, who is seeking his 11th term this fall. He unsuccessfully sought the speakership after Kevin McCarthy’s 2023 ouster, and there has been open chatter in recent months that he is quietly setting the grounds to make another run at the top job.
After flatly denying plans to retain a committee gavel, Jordan was far less direct in addressing other questions about his future in the House.
“I’m focused on one thing, one thing only: winning,” he said. “If the left wins, where they want to take the country is very, very scary.”
Jordan, for instance, did not rule out running against Speaker Mike Johnson for the gavel if Republicans hold onto House majority this fall.
“As I said, I’m focused on winning. We got to win,” he said when asked if he could challenge Johnson, adding “that’s why I’ve been … in 15 different states, and so we just keep going to help our colleagues and candidates.”
Jordan only serves on the Judiciary and Oversight committees, and it is rare for veteran Republican members who are term-limited out of committee leadership posts to stick around as back-benchers in the House.
Jordan did not criticize his fellow chairs who are seeking waivers: “They want a waiver, that’s fine. It’s been granted in the past, and sometimes they get them, sometimes they don’t,” he said, noting it was “up to the conference and the steering committee.”
Asked if he would stay in Congress without a committee or conference leadership position, he noted he is running for reelection: “I’m going to go represent the people in the 4th District.”
Asked a final time what’s next for his decadeslong political career, Jordan chuckled and went through his plans for the day.
“I got like three more interviews,” Jordan said. “And then I’m going to go sit down in that suite, and we’ve got to have some popcorn and watch the speeches. I think that’s what’s next for me.”
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