Congress

Tom Kean Jr. kept his depression a secret. Colleagues are questioning that decision.

Published

4 months ago

July 1, 2026

When Rep. Tom Kean Jr. revealed Tuesday his extended absence from the House was due to inpatient treatment for depression, he ended months of speculation but also fueled a delicate conversation: Just how much privacy are elected officials entitled to?

The New Jersey Republican offered only scant details about his condition during the four months he went missing. And while colleagues of both parties expressed sympathy for his mental health challenges and gratitude that he has now returned, many hedged their comments by saying Kean could and perhaps should have said something earlier.

“Certainly everyone has a right to privacy and to health care and to the mental health care that they need,” said Rep. Maxine Dexter, an Oregon Democrat and physician, while adding that members are obligated to be “transparent and forthcoming.”

“You give up the right to privacy in a certain respect when you run for office and represent that many people,” she said. “And so I do challenge our colleagues to be more transparent when these things happen.”

Even Speaker Mike Johnson suggested Kean should have said more sooner at a news conference Tuesday: “If it were me, I would have been more specific about that, and I encouraged him to be.”

Kean appeared to anticipate that he might be criticized for saying so little as he missed more than 100 votes — no matter how sensitive his diagnosis might be. In the floor speech he gave upon returning Tuesday, he described himself as a “private person by nature” and said he “was still trying to understand what was happening” when his office first attributed his absence to a “medical issue.”

“When I said I hoped to return in a matter of weeks, I believed it,” Kean said. “Those were the best estimates the doctors could provide.”

Other parts of his approach, however, raised eyebrows. His social media accounts continued as if he was still at the Capitol, fueling more questions about his malady. Reports of an empty house back in New Jersey and an aide’s offhand comment that there were “no cameras” where Kean was only added to the speculation.

Many fellow House members spoke carefully Tuesday about Kean’s condition while also making clear that it should not excuse him from accountability for how his absence was handled.

“I think many of us have a tremendous degree of empathy and understanding for a mental health diagnosis,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said in an interview. “There’s a valid discussion here about when it comes to the volume of an absence, what is our responsibility to our constituents in communicating around that?”

Attitudes and practices surrounding mental health care in big-time politics have been transformed since 1972, when Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri lost his No. 2 spot on the Democratic presidential ticket after his bouts with depression were publicized.

While the subject remains taboo among some, more lawmakers have talked openly about their mental health struggles as the disease has grown in prevalence among the general public.

When Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) was hospitalized for clinical depression three years ago, he almost immediately explained his health issues and offered routine public updates.

Fetterman’s transparency was met with plaudits and empathy from his congressional colleagues at the time, but he later said in an interview that he had regrets about opening up.

He blamed “people in the media” for having “weaponized” his illness, he told the New York Times a year ago: “It shook me that people are willing to weaponize that I got help.”

Others have been similarly candid. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) opened up in 2023 about overcoming a debilitating mix of anxiety, depression and the side effects of drugs used to treat them. Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) and Reps. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) and Becca Balint (D-Vt.) have spoken about their struggles, too.

Torres quickly responded to Kean’s announcement in a social media post, noting that while he sympathized, those in elected positions also have “a duty of transparency.”

Balint in an interview questioned whether staying silent on the issue for months served to “perpetuate the stigma” around mental health challenges.

“I’m glad that he is being open in public about it,” she said, while adding, “I wish that he had done that months ago, to even just make just a general statement.”

Rep. Lauren Boebert, who had questioned Kean’s whereabouts before his announcement, was among the small number of members who were not so understanding and called his long absence “ridiculous.”

“I think there’s this dose of depression that comes with every congressional pin that’s issued,” the Colorado Republican said. “Life is depressing. Life is hard. Get to work.”

While few Americans can afford to miss months of work for mental health treatment like Kean, depression-related work absences have become a major issue as the prevalence of the disease in the U.S. has only grown. Depressed workers are many times more likely to miss work because of the condition but are also less likely to self-disclose depression issues.

Several Democrats and Republicans were supportive of Kean immediately after his announcement and applauded him for coming forward with the diagnosis.

“It’s helpful to the American people and to others with depression to be able to acknowledge that this is what’s happening and it’s not a sin, he’s not a bad person, he’s not a weak person,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), a co-chair of the Congressional Mental Health Caucus, said in an interview. “It’s a brain disease, and I want him to be well.”

Beyer also said he was “disappointed” that Kean “felt he couldn’t disclose it,” though said he does not know the fellow congressman well and did not wish to criticize him.

Beyer, who has been open about his son’s schizophrenia diagnosis, said mental health issues should not be a “secret thing tucked away in the closet.”

Kean, for his part, let very few fellow politicians into his confidence. The two other Republicans in the New Jersey delegation, Reps. Jeff Van Drew and Chris Smith, said they had not heard from Kean in months despite calling and texting him out of concern.

Despite what Van Drew described as “radio silence,” the two other New Jersey Republicans defended Kean’s decision to not reveal his diagnosis.

“I was just concerned for him,” Van Drew said. “When you go through something like that, you … choose how you’re going to reveal it. So he decided to do it this way, and that’s fine. It’s his decision.”

Smith said he was optimistic Kean’s public disclosure even now could help reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues. Asked about how much privacy members of Congress are entitled to on personal matters, he said, “There’s a balance.”

“He thought this is probably the best way to do it, and so I respected it,” Smith said.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), a Navy veteran who has been open about having post-traumatic stress disorder, said in an interview he was among a select few who knew months in advance about Kean’s diagnosis. He defended Kean’s decision to keep mum.

“If you’ve got a medical condition, that’s up to you to disclose,” he said. “Anybody that’s saying they should have done this or that — really, they need to get a life.”

Congress

GOP-linked PAC spends over $1M to boost third-party socialist in Ohio Senate race

Published

2 hours ago

October 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A GOP-aligned super PAC has more-than tripled its investment in the Ohio Senate race over the last week as it seeks to boost a socialist candidate — an apparent attempt to sink former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown’s chances.

Enough Promises Ohio, which was created last month, has spent a combined $1.58 million to promote Greg Levy and oppose Brown, according to recent filings from the Federal Election Commission. Levy, a candidate with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, is also on the ballot in the tight race for Senate between Brown and Ohio GOP Sen. Jon Husted. He’s running a longshot bid, currently polling at 5 percent, but could siphon away more progressive voters from Brown.

It wouldn’t be the first time this cycle that operatives for a major political party attempted to raise a third-party candidate’s profile to meddle with the outcome. Recent public polling shows a dead heat between Brown and Husted in the race.

The super PAC spent a total of $828,359 on mailers supporting Levy or opposing Brown. Spectrum News, The Washington Post and Axios previously reported Enough Promises Ohio spent $400,000 on such mailers, but the expenditure has since grown.

The group also poured an additional $753,000 into ads supporting Levy and opposing Brown over the weekend, including one video ad on Google that knocks Brown as someone who “sold us out” and boosts “real progressive Greg Levy.”

The campaign finance filings show Enough Promises Ohio used a printing company linked to a Republican political firm, Whistletop Strategies. Whistletop has worked with an affiliate of President Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC and lists as its “director” Big Dog Strategies, which helped run Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno’s 2024 election campaign and is a consultant for the Ohio GOP.

Enough Promises Ohio did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Big Dog Strategies.

Amy Natoce, a spokesperson for the Husted campaign, told Blue Light News, “our campaign had no involvement with the group you are referencing. Therefore, we have no comment.”

Levy himself has distanced himself from the PAC, calling its boosting of him an “attempted deception of voters” that’s “a form of digital blackface.” Levy is Black. His spokesperson, Charlie Koenigsmark, also told Blue Light News he and the campaign “completely condemn this attempt to manipulate voters.”

Brown did not respond to a request for comment.

Congress

Capitol agenda: AI experts to school Congress wanted

Published

11 hours ago

October 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Artificial intelligence is challenging some lawmakers’ confidence that they have the capacity to regulate it.

The slow pace of Congress and a challenging political environment are already working against lawmakers under pressure to address AI threats. There’s also a significant gap in tech policy expertise.

“We need to dramatically increase the base knowledge of Congress if we’re going to legislate meaningfully,” Rep. Sam Liccardo said in a recent interview.

One big concern is at the staffing level: getting people with a deep understanding of the technology around rank-and-file members. Aides who specialize in tech policy often get lured to private companies with huge salaries that can be hard to resist.

Some lawmakers, like Rep. Mark Takano, are advocating for an in-house hub — something like the long-defunct Office of Technology Assessment, which helped Congress understand emerging technology and its social and policy implications from 1972 until it was scrapped in 1995. A Takano aide said he’ll introduce a bipartisan bill to restore such an office in the coming weeks.

Members have also been leaning on fellows from TechCongress — a nonprofit founded by former congressional aide Travis Moore that places technology experts in member and committee offices.

Moore said in an interview that there are plenty of people who want to work on Capitol Hill, but it’s a matter of “Congress’s will and capacity to absorb that talent.”

Not everybody buys into the theory that staffing will solve the problem. Some conservatives, in particular, have seized on the lack of member expertise to argue for a hands-off regulatory approach.

“We don’t understand it well enough,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis, who has repeatedly brought in technology experts through the TechCongress fellowship, told reporters this month. “We don’t have the expertise to do it.”

“Do you really trust the members of Congress, who barely understand AI, to write the regulations around something?” added Rep. Eric Burlison in an interview last month.

There are a few members who consider themselves fluent in AI policy, including several who have joined working groups on it. They’ve taken educating their colleagues into their own hands but have not always seen great enthusiasm.

Liccardo, for example, recounted how he has brought in experts to brief lawmakers — including huge AI industry figures like Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic— only to struggle to convince members to attend.

“We have had challenges in the past trying to get folks’ attention to the issues,” he said.

What else we’re watching:

— WRIGHT: LAWMAKERS ARE ‘WRONG’ ON RUSSIA: Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Sunday dismissed bipartisan criticism when asked about lawmakers warning that President Donald Trump’s diesel deal would help finance Russia. “In fact, they are all wrong. They don’t understand what President Trump’s doing,” Wright said on ABC News. Wright also defended Trump’s decision Friday exempting Russia from key sanctions outlined in the late Sen. Lindsey Graham sanctions law, which was enacted just last month and set to take effect Sunday. The moves have drawn bipartisan outcry.

— PILOT BILLS GET COMEDIAN’S HELP — Lawmakers are targeting year-end enactment of a pair of bipartisan bills aimed at helping pilots deal with mental health issues and hazy medication regulations, thanks in part to a comedian with an HBO show. Lawmakers and others credit Nathan Fielder, star of the docu-comedy “The Rehearsal” for raising awareness on the stresses pilots face in the hit show last year. They say Fielder wasn’t actively involved in lobbying despite pleas from some for help. “Frankly, I’m glad he elevated the story,” Rep. Sean Casten, one of the lawmakers leading the mental health legislation, told Safa. After passing the Senate late last month, the two bills are awaiting House action.

Katherine Tully-McManus, Jalen Beckford and Safa Wahidi contributed to this report.

Congress

Wanted: Tech experts to help Congress regulate AI

Published

14 hours ago

October 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Lawmakers are under pressure to pass legislation to address the threats from advanced artificial intelligence, but many have serious doubts they have the capacity to regulate the technology’s explosive growth.

Few are expecting lawmakers themselves — some of whom still proudly use flip phones — to become AI experts overnight. But while even congressional Luddites acknowledge there is urgency for Capitol Hill to quickly expand its expertise in tech policy to help with legislating, regulating and conducting effective oversight, there’s no consensus yet on how to achieve it.

“We need to dramatically increase the base knowledge of Congress if we’re going to legislate meaningfully,” Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-Calif.) said in a recent interview.

Congress already has a long track record of lagging behind as technological innovations transform the world beyond Washington: It has adopted a largely hands-off approach to regulating the Internet as it integrated into everyday life in the past 40 years, relying instead on existing laws that govern other industries and taking smaller piecemeal bites.

The challenging political environment won’t help speed things along now: Democrats are split over whether the answer is to put guardrails on the AI industry or ban “superintelligence” entirely, while many Republicans — including President Donald Trump — warn that any regulation would stifle innovation and cede ground to China.

Some members consider themselves fluent in AI policy, including several who have joined working groups on AI policy. Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.) have pursued masters degrees in AI and machine learning, in addition to many others who are self-taught.

The “overwhelming number” of lawmakers have some idea of what AI is and what it is capable of, Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-N.C.), co-chair of a House Democratic commission on AI policy, said in a recent interview. But, she added, “None of us can say that we understand where it’s going.”

The larger concern is at the staff level — putting people with real expertise around the rank-and-file members who don’t have the bandwidth or interest in educating themselves on the frontier of the industry. Aides who do specialize in tech policy often get lured to the industry with huge salaries that can be hard to resist.

That’s where Travis Moore, a former congressional staffer, has spent more than a decade trying to help.

In 2015, Moore left his post as legislative director for Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and founded TechCongress, a nonprofit that places technology experts in member and committee offices. The hope is that those offices will be convinced to hire those fellows full-time — or at least recognize the need to secure in-house tech policy expertise.

“You should have a technologist at the table to at least mitigate the unknown unknowns,” Moore said, regardless of what members themselves know about technology.

As AI has boomed, so has demand for TechCongress’ fellows: In the last two years, Moore has fielded more than 1,200 applications for about 36 fellowship slots through the program, which does not accept funding from corporations or tech companies.

Of nearly 130 fellows selected through the program since its founding, Moore said 32 were later hired full-time. Two-thirds of all the fellows have pursued careers in public service, either on Capitol Hill or other government roles.

Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), one of the leaders on AI policy on Capitol Hill, is among the offices that currently employs a TechCongress fellow. The House Judiciary Committee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) also host fellows.

Moore says his initiative has shown there are plenty of people who want to work on Capitol Hill to help inform some of the most pressing issues of the moment — even when more lucrative salaries in the private sector beckon.

“The constraint is not talent supply,” Moore said in an interview. Rather, he said, it’s a matter of “Congress’s will and capacity to absorb that talent.”

Some on Capitol Hill are advocating for an in-house hub — something like the long-defunct Office of Technology Assessment, which helped Congress understand emerging technology and its social and policy implications from 1972 until it was scrapped in 1995.

Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) has long championed efforts to revive the OTA for years and expects to reintroduce his legislation restoring the office in the coming weeks with bipartisan backing, spokesperson Austin Clark said.

Not everybody buys into the theory that staffing will solve the problem. Some conservatives, in particular, have seized on the lack of member expertise to argue for a hands-off approach to regulation.

“We don’t understand it well enough,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), who has repeatedly brought in technology experts through the TechCongress fellowship, told reporters this month. “You can’t address it based on what policymakers know about it on a one-size-fits-all universal basis. … We don’t have the expertise to do it.”

“Do you really trust the members of Congress, who barely understand AI, to write the regulations around something?” added Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) in an interview last month.

Others don’t see a hopeless cause, but a convenient excuse.

“I understand it’s hard, but lots of things we do here are hard,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in an interview, noting that lawmakers have had to bone up quickly on everything from nuclear energy policy to complex weapons systems and advances in health care, like biologic drugs.

“I just think the industry wants us to believe that there’s seven people who understand this, and that’s just not true,” Murphy said, accusing some of his colleagues of “just throwing shit up against the wall to try to figure out how to justify doing nothing.”

A few members on both sides of the aisle have taken educating their colleagues into their own hands. Obernotle says he helped tutor more than two dozen House members through the bipartisan AI working group he chaired in the previous Congress.

Liccardo, who represents parts of Silicon Valley, recounted how he has brought in experts to brief lawmakers — including huge AI industry figures like Sam Altman of OpenAI, Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Jensen Huang of Nvidia — only to struggle to convince members to attend.

“We have had challenges in the past trying to get folks’ attention to the issues,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do, I’ll just say, to get everybody up to speed.”

Riley Rogerson, Jordain Carney and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.