Congress

Thom Tillis isn’t done yet with Donald Trump’s nominees

Published

4 months ago

April 30, 2026

Thom Tillis took on President Donald Trump’s administration in a monthslong battle to quash the criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell — and won.

Now he’s urging those around the president to take his latest ultimatum seriously — that he won’t confirm for attorney general anyone who excuses the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

“Hopefully they’ll take me at my word when I say anybody who equivocated on the Jan. 6 rioters, I just can’t support,” the North Carolina Republican said about Justice Department nominees.

Tillis has major leverage as a member of the Judiciary Committee, where Republicans have a one-vote advantage and he can exercise an effective veto.

That’s exactly what Tillis did in the Senate Banking Committee with would-be Powell successor Kevin Warsh — until Wednesday, when he cast a vote allowing Warsh to move to the floor for confirmation next month.

He did so only after a three-month stalemate over the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Powell lied to Congress during a Senate hearing last year — a probe that Tillis warned was an attempt by Trump advisors to target the independence of the Federal Reserve.

A flurry of 11th-hour negotiations led to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro announcing last week she was closing the probe, with Tillis describing in an interview how he “spoke to people in DOJ several times over the course of a few days” around the time of the announcement. He also said he was “also sort of bouncing off where Chair Powell was, too,” though he declined to say if he spoke directly to Powell.

It was a rare instance of a sitting senator successfully using leverage against an administration of his own party and coming out on top.

“Every single member of the conference has the same option,” Tillis said about whether other GOP colleagues could replicate his model. “I’ve seen people do silly things like blanket holds and stuff like that that are not sustainable.”

In the hours after the committee vote Wednesday, Tillis again spoke out against the whitewashing of Jan. 6, recounting Wednesday how he was the last senator to leave the chamber the day a mob of Trump supporters temporarily suspended the counting of the 2020 Electoral College vote. He previously sank Ed Martin’s U.S. attorney nomination because of his previous comments related to the riot and his work defending those who took part in it.

“I’ll scrub it when a nominee comes forward, and I’ll apply the Martin standard,” Tillis said of any pick to succeed ousted Attorney General Pam Bondi. “By the way, I don’t think Martin is employed by the DOJ anymore, either, is he?”

There are some differences between the situation with Powell and the vacancy atop the Justice Department.

Hanging over the Fed chair negotiations was a May 15 end date for Powell’s term, Trump’s determination to replace him and the administration’s realization that TIllis was not about to back down from his pledge to keep his hold as long as the criminal investigation was ongoing.

“I think they understood if we didn’t get it done today, tomorrow, this week, that he wouldn’t be seated by the time the term expires,” Tillis said of the administration.

There is not the same pressure to fill the AG post. Todd Blanche, who was confirmed last year as deputy attorney general, is now serving as acting attorney general, and he is free under federal law to serve at least into late October.

Some argue he could essentially serve indefinitely, with many pointing to the tenure of former Deputy Labor Secretary Julie Su, who served as acting secretary for nearly two years under former President Joe Biden.

That could effectively mean Trump could wait out Tillis, who is retiring and will relinquish his seat in January — though that would also risk a potential Democratic midterm takeover of the Senate majority.

Tillis said Wednesday he would be sticking to his principles regardless of how the attorney general vacancy plays out. He said his fight to protect Powell and how it was resolved this week was “very important” for ensuring the Federal Reserve’s independence.

Tillis also linked the months-long fight to another hotly debated topic: the fate of the chamber’s 60-vote legislative filibuster that Trump wants to see axed. Like most GOP senators, Tillis wants it to stay.

“Then a simple majority would have been enough to discharge [Warsh] from committee,” Tillis said, noting that the organization of the Senate — including the makeup of committees — is done by consensus due to the filibuster.

Tillis is in a unique position. Due to his impending retirement, he is free of political consequences, and he’s on a host of key committees that give him an outsized role in several of the administration’s priorities. He has been increasingly outspoken about decisions within the Trump administration and from corners of the party he disagrees with — though he’s been careful to stress that he believes he has a respectful relationship with Trump and wants him to be successful.

Trump, for his part, suggested Tillis had already left the Senate in a Fox News interview last week where he was pressed on the Warsh blockade: “You know Thom Tillis is no longer a senator, right? He quit.” Tillis quipped back at the time, “I’m not dead yet.”

On Wednesday, Tillis urged the administration to share more information with Congress on its Iran strategy, questioned whether a “first-semester law student” would believe the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey was credible and urged the House to “recognize reality” and end the Department of Homeland Security shutdown.

“We own the shutdown right now because we can’t get the House to vote on something that 100 senators voted on,” Tillis said. “The American people are not dumb, and they know that the holdup now is not Democrats in the House. It’s Republicans.”

Congress

How Talarico is countering Trump’s midterms convention

Published

1 day ago

September 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

James Talarico is planning to counterprogram President Donald Trump’s GOP midterms convention in Dallas with a focus on affordability.

The idea from the Texas Democratic Senate candidate and seminarian: host a statewide “Love Thy Neighbor” food drive to offer a contrast with Republicans coming to town and highlight the high cost of groceries, according to plans shared first with Blue Light News.

“Next week, billionaire mega-donors and their puppet politicians will gather at a convention in Dallas to clink champagne glasses and toast their own corruption. They’re paying $20,000 for entry to a Billionaire Ball celebrating corrupt tariffs, billionaire tax breaks, and a new forever war that are all driving grocery costs through the roof,” Talarico said in a statement to Blue Light News. “We’ll be doing something different. We’re bringing Republicans, Democrats, and Independents together to collect groceries for our neighbors who have been screwed over by corrupt politicians.”

The campaign said it will “mobilize volunteers to collect, sort, and donate groceries for middle class Texans struggling with the high price of groceries.” The event will last from Sunday, Sept. 6 through Wednesday, Sept. 9 — the same day the GOP convention kicks off.

Talarico is also expected to field media interviews in a large warehouse near the convention.

“Texans across the political spectrum will come together to build community, show up for their neighbors, and take power back for working people,” the campaign said in a statement.

A recent poll conducted by Texas Public Opinion Research poll released last week showed Talarico leading ,his opponent Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, 48 percent to 42 percent.

Trump this week said he would campaign for Paxton soon.

Congress

‘I don’t think anyone is really comfortable’: Democrat leading on AI raises alarms at Trump, Zuckerberg call

Published

1 day ago

September 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A House Democrat trying to lead her party on artificial intelligence policy sent a warning shot Friday to tech CEOs trying to undermine efforts to regulate the fast-growing technology.

In an interview, Rep. Lori Trahan raised alarm bells over a POLITICO report detailing attempts by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to personally discourage President Donald Trump from moving ahead with plans to establish an independent AI regulator modeled after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA.

“I don’t think anyone is really comfortable when they see tech executives who are sitting on the stage at the president’s inauguration, and have had to pay millions of dollars to this fund and that fund, calling the shots,” said the Massachusetts Democrat.

Allowing Zuckerberg to call the shots on the proposed AI commission would be tantamount to “a complete abdication of Congress,” Trahan continued. She also suggested would use her perch on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to work with other Democrats to haul in industry executives like Zuckerberg to testify, should Democrats win back the House majority in the midterms.

“Congress’ job is to do oversight and to have those hearings,” she said. “And I think we would learn a lot from those hearings so that we can put pen to paper on thoughtful proposals. So yes, there have been a number of people, myself included, who have called for those hearings, and I think we’re going to continue to do that.”

Trahan is poised to be a major player in the coming weeks and months when it comes to AI, especially if Democrats prevail in the November elections and are forced to solidify a position on the subject; the party is currently all over the map.

Unlike other Democrats who have retreated to their corners to work on partisan proposals, Trahan has gone out on a limb by crossing the aisle to broker a deal on a bipartisan AI safety bill with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) — a package that was originally met with disdain by members of both parties.

She announced this week she would opt out of a run for a place in House Democratic leadership after being widely expected to make a play in the next Congress — in part, she said, to continue working on AI issues.

But Trahan’s comments Friday illustrate the deep distrust among Democrats, herself included, over the GOP approach to AI regulation — from Republicans waffling on whether they support the proliferation of data centers to Trump’s recent call with Zuckerberg.

Her calls are consistent with left-leaning members like Rep. Greg Casar, a Texas Democrat and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who has been at the forefront of the most aggressive proposals to crack down on top tech companies.

“The CEOs of Anthropic and OpenAI say that cutting edge AI could be as dangerous as nuclear weapons,” Casar said Thursday on X in response to the Blue Light News report. “But Trump is conspiring with billionaires for this technology to be regulated like … Hollywood movies.”

Trahan said Friday that “reasonable people can disagree on what regulatory construct we come up with” governing development and use of AI.

But, she added, “what I don’t think the American people agree with is that Mark Zuckerberg and President Trump are going to figure that out on a phone call.”

Congress

House Dem election leader’s message to states: Count faster

Published

2 days ago

September 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Democrats’ top election leader has a message for states ahead of the midterms: count faster.

“We are, I think, nicely trying to encourage people to do their balloting as quickly as possible, and that means hiring additional staff so that it doesn’t call into question results,” Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, said in a Thursday interview with Blue Light News.

The advice is just one part of Morelle’s efforts to secure the midterm elections. He said Democrats have wargamed over 150 scenarios of how the Trump administration could attempt to interfere or complicate the November elections and its certification. He is encouraging states to have a “degree of urgency” when counting ballots to stave off Republican-led conspiracy theories about the reasons for delays.

Morelle said he is leaning on states to staff up on election officials to facilitate speedy ballot counting while emphasizing the process should still be “done properly,” “fairly” and that “we don’t want people with cast ballots not to have their ballots counted.” He is going to Los Angeles next week to deliver that message and meet with election security experts and election administrators — though he did not specify whom he is meeting with or where.

“We are trying to gently encourage people to staff up,” he said. Morelle added that if Democrats take the House majority, they’d “push for more resources for local and state administrators so they can hire additional capacity.”

Morelle has other big plans in the majority, including cracking down on dark money in politics, protecting voting rights and most notably, working on a bipartisan voter identification bill.

Asked whether he could accept some form of voter identification as part of a larger bipartisan elections package, Morelle said, “I’m personally not opposed to some form of voter ID,” adding that he has opposed multiple Republican-led proposals to tighten up identification requirements.

“I don’t know where my colleagues on the Democrat side will be, but I think voters think, ‘Okay, you show your ID for just tons of things. Is it really that much of a burden?’” he said. “And if it is, we’ll get state issued IDs or federally issued IDs to people who can’t afford it. So I do think that there’s hope for a bipartisan way forward, and I’ll be anxious to work with colleagues to do it.”