Congress
Tom Emmer has a message for House GOP chairs: Term limits matter
DALLAS — House Majority Whip Tom Emmer has a message for the multiple House committee chairs seeking an exception from Republicans’ term limit rule: He’s “not a fan” of waivers, and you should have a good reason for seeking one.
“I’ve never liked waivers,” Emmer said in an interview at the GOP midterm convention. “I think it’s one of the things that helped the Republican majority stay more connected to Main Street.”
As the No. 3 Republican leader, Emmer does not control the waivers, which are in the hands of the 35-member GOP Steering Committee and the larger House Republican Conference.
But he has an influential voice as a top leader and Steering Committee member, and he said there are only “limited circumstances where it might make sense” to allow Republicans to lead a committee for more than three terms.
Several chairs, including Agriculture’s G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) and Armed Services’ Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), have applied for waivers to continue in their posts next Congress. The three-term limit includes time served leading panels in both the majority and minority.
Emmer said members should be free to make their case to continue on but, he said, the bar should be high.
“I love our members who have been around for years and have institutional knowledge,” Emmer said. “But unlike Democrats, we have turnover on the Republican side.”
He added, “Every two election cycles or so, you have close to 50 percent turnover in the Republican House. You don’t get that in the Senate. You get people who are serving as octogenarians, and they’re showing no signs of leaving.”
One GOP chair who is planning on handing off his gavel is Judiciary’s Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a MAGA favorite who could start the new Congress without a perch of power — leading to rampant speculation about what he has planned.
“I heard the president saylast week in the Rose Garden that we need to keep Jim right where he is, which was interesting because it’s like — OK, but I think he’s termed out,” Emmer said.
Many believe that Jordan — as well as Emmer and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise — could seek to run for the top leadership post now held by Speaker Mike Johnson if Republicans lose their majority in November. Emmer reiterated that he believes that won’t happen and that the GOP leadership will stay the same.
“It’s going to be Mike Johnson, Steve Scalise. I hope I’m rehired, and I expect Lisa McClain will be rehired,” he said, referring to the No. 4 GOP leader from Michigan.
Sen. Josh Hawley wants more details on a cyberattack in which OpenAI’s model escaped containment and hacked a competitor, marking an escalation as both parties seek to rein in the risks posed by its models.
Hawley, chair of the Senate Homeland Security Subcommittee on Disaster Management, sent a letter to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Wednesday outlining his concerns about the incident, which the company disclosed in July. OpenAI’s models spent more than four days loose online and hacked into Hugging Face’s networks.
OpenAI is now facing calls from both sides of the aisle to provide more details on the incident, which marked the first documented fully autonomous cyberattack.
“Such evidence of autonomous collusion and subversion of human oversight is alarming enough, but greater still is the evidence that OpenAI knew that the AI agents were exhibiting rogue behavior and let the evaluations continue anyway,” Hawley (R-Mo.) wrote.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) sent a similar letter to Altman on Wednesday demanding to see the independent audits of the incident and details on the development of the company’s latest model, Astra. Independent auditing groups METR and Redwood Research conducted the investigations, but OpenAI has reportedly limited them.
The Hugging Face incident fueled concerns among lawmakers in both parties about the risks posed by advanced AI models. OpenAI launched its latest model Astra last week, despite lingering safety concerns.
More than a dozen states have also opened investigations into the incident. California, which is home to OpenAI, is the latest state to open a probe into the company.
Hawley has given Altman and OpenAI until Oct. 1 to fulfill his request. Blumenthal requested that Altman answer his questions by Sept. 24.
Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.) is planning to hold another committee vote on his farm bill plans next week, in a new attempt to squeeze the farmer-friendly policies through to the full chamber ahead of November’s midterms.
The panel first met in early August to debate and vote on the GOP-led package. But the legislation stalled due to opposition from committee Democrats and the continued absence of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) from the Capitol.
Boozman hasn’t set a firm date for a committee meeting next week, he told Blue Light News on Thursday. He recessed the committee before the Senate’s summer break so he could call them back for another vote without a lengthy amendment and debate process.
“I really feel like it’s important to continue to have members express where they’re at on this, and so we are going to vote again next week,” Boozman said.
McConnell, who had been in the hospital since June and returned home for rehab in August, is hoping to be present in committee to vote for the package “if it’s humanly possible,” Boozman said.
“I haven’t talked to him personally since the markup, but I know my staff has been communicating with his staff,” Boozman said.
“It seems like Sen. McConnell is continuing to recover and doing well. So hopefully, we’ll get him back. We don’t have any assurance of that, but we do have the assurance that he is doing better,” he said.
Boozman said he will still call for next week’s vote regardless of whether McConnell is well enough to attend — potentially leaving the fate of the chamber’s farm bill again in Democrats’ hands.
Democrats voted against the package in August due to ongoing frustration over the GOP’s massive spending cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Their top demand is for Republicans to give all states two extra years before the onset of a new requirement that will require state governments to pay for part of SNAP benefits. Such a delay would put all states on the same timeline as a group of states with the highest rates of erroneous SNAP benefit payments, which were given a carve-out in the GOP’s policy megabill passed last summer.
Boozman’s bill includes a one-year delay of the cost-share implementation. He told Blue Light News that offer is still his best, and final, one to Democrats.
The Senate Commerce Committee could take up artificial intelligence regulation after the chamber returns to Washington next week, Sen. Ted Cruz said.
“We need substantially more regulation when it comes to AI,” the Texas Republican, who chairs the committee overseeing the fast-evolving technology, said in a Tuesday night interview for Blue Light News’s “The Conversation” with Dasha Burns.
Cruz’s remarks come as catastrophic risks from AI are in the spotlight this week following a viral social media post from a former Anthropic researcher. The post — which Cruz said he read and called “scary as hell” — cautioned that the leading AI companies have been “gambling with our lives,” prompting fresh calls to action from lawmakers in Washington.
Cruz, citing a conversation he had with Elon Musk in which the trillionaire entrepreneur predicted the chance that AI could “destroy humanity” was in 10-20% in the next 10 years, said he’s taking the risk of AI seriously. “It’s deeply concerning.”
The senator said the measures his committee would consider include a fresh bill from him, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to address AI uses that create biological and nuclear threats.
The bill could be introduced as soon as next week, according to reporting from Semafor.
Still, he warned that any government regulation of AI should not thwart America’s lead in the AI race against China.
“The Chinese are putting no guardrails. They’re going full speed ahead,” said Cruz. “We could have government step in and just shut down the AI industry in America, and you know what would happen? China would catch up in six months and soar ahead, and we wouldn’t have the tools to defend ourselves.”
The full interview with Cruz — where he also talked about the midterms, a potential 2028 bid and more — will be published on an upcoming episode of “The Conversation.”
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