Congress
Thune’s plans for the fall shutdown fight
Senate Majority Leader John Thune says Congress will need a short-term spending bill to prevent a shutdown Oct. 1, with leadership allies likely to push for a patch running up until the holidays.
The South Dakota Republican’s comments in an interview Wednesday reveal how Republicans are already thinking about their strategy for the fall funding fight, with Thune in particular expected to face divisions within his own party about what to do.
And while Thune acknowledged that Republicans tasked with writing the funding bills will want a short-term stopgap, some GOP hardliners are already pushing for a year-long measure that just extends current funding levels — something Thune cautioned is “never … a very good solution.”
“It locks in spending from the last year,” he said. “You don’t get a chance to make judgments or decisions.”
Thune’s goal, instead, is to get as many of the 12 annual funding bills as possible signed into law by Oct. 1, and then use a more limited stopgap measure to temporarily cover the rest of the federal government. The Senate is moving its first tranche of funding bills this week, and Thune said he wanted to pass another three or four in September, which would let the chamber bless at least half of the dozen appropriations measures in time for the shutdown deadline.
But Thune will need to negotiate not only with his own members but also Republicans in the House, where appropriators are drafting bills that make deeper cuts than many of those being written in the Senate.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), in a separate interview Wednesday, suggested the House and Senate could use the August recess to discuss resolving differences in their funding measures: “We want to try to get a negotiated appropriations process. And we still have that ability.”
Scalise also agreed with Thune that a stopgap funding bill would not be “ideal,” as it would keep the previous administration’s policies in place and also would be “bad for defense.”
Hanging over it all is the White House’s push to send another request to claw back funding. A White House aide said this week that Congress could soon receive a request to greenlight cuts to education programs. Thune said he hasn’t yet had conversations with the White House about what should be in that second rescissions package and hasn’t “had a lot of visibility into it other than kind of general categories.”
Senate Democrats are still working out their own shutdown strategy, and many of them are warning that Republicans shouldn’t bank on Democratic support for a government funding bill this fall if Republicans continue to pursue party-line spending tactics. Some Democrats say they should make their support for a government funding bill conditional on Republicans promising not to vote on any more rescissions bills.
Thune, however, said Wednesday that he “can’t, probably, guarantee that.”
He also sidestepped whether he believed White House budget director Russ Vought should wait until after the government funding deadline to send over another claw-back request, but added: “I just want to see us have an appropriations process.”
Meredith Lee Hill contributed reporting.
The chair of the House Agriculture Committee said he’s not willing to “accept bad results” as a tradeoff for the benefits of advancements in artificial intelligence — a direct rebuttal to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“As someone who practiced health care for 28 years, I’m never willing to accept bad results. I think we just need to do our best,” Rep. G.T. Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, told reporters Monday.
He was responding to Altman’s comments to Decoded by Blue Light News that people “should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.”
Pressed further on whether he agreed with Altman’s premise, Thompson replied, “No, I think we have to work harder to prevent any bad things from happening.”
Altman’s comments come in the wake of increased panic over the risks of catastrophic destruction from AI, with many industry leaders and experts arguing that guardrails are needed on the technology to prevent it from spinning out of human control.
Pressure is building on Congress to regulate the rapidly-advancing technology, but lawmakers are divided over whether the AI industry needs federal regulation or if it’s capable of governing itself.
The executives of major AI labs and tech companies gathered at the White House last week to discuss solutions with President Donald Trump, who believes overregulating AI will have national security repercussions. The group ended up signing a “morally binding” AI accord that critics say won’t do enough to prevent a worst-case scenario.
Thompson noted Monday he believes that AI will bring “tremendous solutions,” specifically in regards to finding cures for health issues like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. But he also said AI has to be led with “principle” — comparing it to how he addressed digital assets in a bill to regulate the cryptocurrency industry, which he worked on as chair of the Agriculture Committee.
“The first principle is ‘do no harm.’ So we need to protect consumers, and that means, I think, building some guardrails — some guidelines — to do that,” Thompson said. He added that the second principle is to “foster innovation.”
“I think AI has a lot to do with that,” he added. “I don’t think AI works without RI: Real Intelligence.”
LE SUEUR, Minnesota — Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday there is no “consensus” yet on advancing a bill establishing permanent daylight saving time even as President Donald Trump ramps up pressure on Republicans to pass it.
Thune addressed the matter in a Monday interview after Trump used his Truth Social account multiple times over the weekend to rail against the legislation, known as the Sunshine Protection Act — going so far as to post the personal cell phone number of one of its GOP opponents, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
“The president feels strongly on it like he does a lot of issues,” he said. “It’s something we’re having conversations about but there’s no clear path forward or consensus on it yet.”
While Trump singled out Cotton for scrutiny, Thune made clear the opposition to the permanent daylight saving time proposal — which would lead to very late winter sunrises in some parts of the country — ran deeper than one senator.
Cotton has publicly voiced opposition to the proposal for year, citing, among other things, the fact that children in his state would be going to school in the dark for part of the year.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) voiced similar objections Monday to reporters in the Capitol, saying he was mindful of “safety concerns in the more northern and rural states where children get on the school bus in very early hours.”
Thune, who spoke during a campaign swing in Minnesota with GOP Senate nominee Michele Tafoya, has himself opposed previous daylight saving bills. He said Monday that “a lot of it depends on where you are in the country” and that “your geography probably has as much to do with your position on that as anything.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who has aligned himself closely with Trump, is among the lawmakers who have been pushing to get the bill through the Senate. He recently told POLITICO, “I’m going to make sure it gets passed this year.”
Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.
Democrats have pulled back some of their ads in North Carolina’s Senate race, days after the top Senate Republican super PAC paused its future spending in the state.
WinSenate, a group affiliated with the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC, has removed roughly $1.1 million in North Carolina ad buys this week, according to ad tracking firm AdImpact. The group still has roughly $18.8 million in future reservations through Election Day.
“Senate Majority PAC is committed to seeing this race through to victory, and will continue to make spending decisions based on how to best build a strong Senate majority,” Senate Majority PAC spokesperson Lauren French said in a statement.
The move, combined with the GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund’s decision to pause future spending, are a signal that both parties are shifting resources amid an ever-expanding Senate map. Democrats are increasingly confident in their North Carolina Senate nominee, Roy Cooper, as he continues to hold a sizable lead in public polling over Republican Michael Whatley — but some privately say states like Michigan and New Hampshire need more resources.
Meanwhile, multiple Republican groups, not just SLF, have retreated from the state in recent weeks, effectively deciding that it’s no longer worth the money to boost Whatley’s campaign.
The Koch-aligned Americans for Prosperity Action left North Carolina off its $22 million list of future spending across key Senate contests, and Old North Action removed $6.5 million in ad reservations last month.
The Cooper campaign, however, is still treating the race as competitive, pointing to North Carolina’s closely divided electorate and the fact that President Donald Trump won the state in each of the past three presidential elections.
“North Carolina is a truly 50/50 state and Democrats haven’t won a US Senate race in 18 years. We can’t take anything for granted or our eye off the ball,” said Morgan Jackson, a senior adviser to the Cooper campaign. “DC is broken and we’re going to continue to run this race like we’re ten points down to ensure North Carolinians get the change they desperately need.”
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