Congress
Troops will get their paychecks this week, Vance says
Vice President JD Vance said military members will continue receiving their pay amid the government shutdown, suggesting to reporters Tuesday that President Donald Trump has identified new funding to avoid a first-ever lapse in troop pay.
“We believe that we can continue to pay the troops on Friday,” he said after addressing a closed-door Senate GOP lunch. “Unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to pay everybody, because we’ve been handed a very bad hand by the Democrats.”
“This is one of the reasons why you’ve seen some layoffs in the federal workforce. We do think that we can continue paying the troops, at least for now,” he added
Vance also said that the White House is working to keep “as much open as possible,” including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the federal food aid program that is set to run out of cash at the end of the week. He said the White House is “exploring all options” to ensure food benefits flow and military members get paid, he said, noting it would be easier if Democrats voted to open the government.
“There are limitations on all these funds. There are limitations on how you can use them,” Vance said. “Obviously, it’s a limited pot of money, so even if you use them for one thing, that means you can’t use them for another.”
Vance, according to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), did not discuss paying the military or SNAP funding during the closed-door lunch. The Pentagon made payments to active duty troops earlier this month by tapping a Defense Department research and development account. The White House has not released details about how the upcoming paychecks will be funded.
Republican senators were more interested in talking about another issue: President Donald Trump’s plan to import beef from Argentina, according to five senators in the room.
Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) said Republicans gave Vance an “earful,” but two other senators, who were granted anonymity to describe the private meeting, said Vance gave no indication Trump is going to change his strategy on beef imports.
Vance’s lunch with Senate Republicans comes on the 28th day of the shutdown, starting shortly after Democrats once again rejected a House-passed bill that would fund the government through Nov. 21.
Vance stressed to GOP senators in the room to stay united and force Democrats to reopen the full government. He counseled against passing narrow “rifle shot” exemptions to the shutdown, according to one GOP senator who attended.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune ruled out votes on those narrower bills in comments to reporters after the lunch.
“This piecemeal approach where you do one-off here, one-off there … that is the wrong way to do this,” Thune said. “That’s not the way to approach this.”
Vance also sent a message to GOP senators to stand behind Trump’s tariff campaign ahead of a series of votes this week that would undermine recent duties levied on Brazil, Canada and other countries. Vance said he told Republican senators that the tariffs “give us the ability to put American workers first” — though he added that he recognized there is “a diversity of opinions” among Republicans on the matter.
Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said Vance’s message was that “we should stick together” and that “the president’s working to get better trade deals, and he’s having real success.”
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
The bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus launched a working group to address artificial intelligence and other evolving technologies, the group announced Thursday.
The working group comes as Congress grapples with public alarm over the growing capabilities of AI and claims it could doom humanity, and the need to advance the powerful technology faster than China.
The new group is meant to toe the line between safety and development.
The group will be co-chaired by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), who also co-chairs Democrats’ AI commission.
“One thing is clear: getting AI policy right is critical to our future — to American children, families, our national security, and our global competitiveness,” Gottheimer said in a statement. “We can win the AI race — but we must do it in a smart way with commonsense guardrails and rules of the road.”
“Artificial intelligence is transforming our economy, workforce, and national security, and the United States must lead, not China,” Lawler added. “We need commonsense guardrails that protect Americans, empower workers and small businesses, and ensure AI remains secure, transparent, and trustworthy.”
Reps. Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.) and Blake Moore (R-Utah) will serve as the group’s vice chairs, with Reps. David Joyce (R-Ohio), Susie Lee (D-Nev.), Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.), Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), Tom Kean (R-N.J.), Angie Craig (D-Minn.), Maria Salazar (R-Fla.) and Scott Peters (D-Calif.) rounding out the body.
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) forcefully pushed back against President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda in a campaign ad released on Thursday, a rare rebuke of the White House’s aggressive immigration policy from inside the Republican Party.
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” she told Trump in a straight-to-camera video that is airing on television in the Miami market, according to the ad tracking firm AdImpact.
The criticism from Salazar, who represents a red-leaning district based in Miami-Dade County, comes with Republicans increasingly worried that concerns over the economy and the president’s immigration crackdown will roll back gains the party made with Hispanic voters in the general election two years ago.
Trump’s strong rhetoric on immigration helped propel him to the White House in 2024. But he’s seen his standing on the issue drop massively in the wake of an ill-fated surge of immigration enforcement into Minneapolis last winter that resulted in the deaths of two American protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Even as the White House has sought to dampen public criticism of its mass deportation campaign, just a fourth of Trump’s 2024 voters told a POLITICO poll in August that the president’s push has been too aggressive, numbers that roughly matched totals from January and April polls.
“Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy,” Salazar said in the ad. “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
She also released a similar ad in Spanish.
Trump endorsed Salazar in February. But the three-term lawmaker, whose district is dominated by Latino voters, has not thrown her full support behind him on immigration. Still, Eliott Rodriguez, her Democratic opponent in the November election, has said she has failed to stand up to the president.
Salazar’s seat is not considered among the core battlegrounds in November; Trump won the district — which was only nominally reshaped during Florida’s recent gerrymander — by more than 14 points in 2024, according to calculations from The Downballot. But her Democratic challenger has recently circulated internal polling showing the race as a tossup.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Americans — and Congress — are divided on whether it’s acceptable to fall behind other countries in the race to develop advanced artificial intelligence.
And that fear of international competition is emerging as a key point of tension slowing down any path to AI safety legislation.
Even as almost two thirds of respondents in a new Blue Light News poll said there’s a real possibility that AI could destroy humanity, they’re split on whether it’s acceptable to slow down and potentially fall behind other countries like China in an AI arms race.
A plurality, 43 percent, say it is okay for the U.S. to fall behind if that means developing AI more responsibly and securely, while 37 percent take the opposite view. Voters who backed Donald Trump in 2024 favor the competition-first position by 50 percent compared to just 34 percent of Kamala Harris voters.
Republican Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie argued the U.S. cannot risk Chinese AI dominance, and that AI legislation is too complex to rush — even if that means pushing off until next year consideration of a measure by his panel.
“We absolutely can’t surrender,” he said Wednesday at Blue Light News’s Decoded Summit.
Meanwhile, the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said competition isn’t a reason to avoid guardrails.
“The AI race is not an arms race that you win,” Rep. Greg Casar said at the Decoded Summit.
Other lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are trying to strike a balance. Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, acknowledged lawmakers “do have a responsibility for public safety” while saying it was also important to “beat China when it comes to the AI race.”
Still, the emerging divisions spotlight a long road ahead for any consensus from Congress.
An attempt to quickly pass a bill requiring companies to build a “kill switch” into their AI models from Republican Sen. John Kennedy was blocked Wednesday by Sen. Rand Paul on the chamber’s floor.
And while Guthrie’s Senate counterpart, Commerce Chair Ted Cruz said Wednesday his hope was still to mark up this month a bipartisan AI safety bill from Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, lawmakers haven’t reached agreement to finalize the measure. Thune himself said Wednesday he was unsure it would happen before the midterms.
Cracks are also starting to show among the leading AI companies on what role they want Congress to play.
One example: Anthropic’s policy chief Sarah Heck declined at Blue Light News’s summit to endorse a proposal for congressionally mandated independent AI monitoring — a day after competitor OpenAI endorsed it. The proposal is a key provision in Reps. Jay Obernolte and Lori Trahan’s bipartisan AI safety measure.
The House’s early dismissal Wednesday only added to time pressure on lawmakers, who will return to a lame duck session with an already full calendar.
What else we’re watching:
— LEE BULLISH ON PERMITTING: Energy and Natural Resources Chair Mike Lee told fellow Republicans during a closed-door lunch Wednesday he is “guardedly optimistic” that negotiators will reach a long-sought deal on a bill to ease permitting approval for energy projects. “We were told today that the Democrats are going to agree to a permitting bill, and it’s going to be drafted and ready for us to vote on,” Kennedy said in an interview. Still, the top negotiators have yet to clinch an agreement, meaning the timeline could slip until after the midterms.
— SPY LAW TIMING UNCLEAR: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently warnedCongress that if it doesn’t vote on a controversial surveillance law by Nov. 20, the program could go dark, but it’s unclear congressional leadership can meet that deadline. Thune told reporters this week that there is an “interest” in trying to get Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reauthorized, but didn’t commit to getting a vote before the midterms. With the House gone, reauthorization will wait until at least mid-November, regardless.
Riley Rogerson, Mia McCarthy, Anna Wiederkehr, Jordain Carney, John Sakellariadis and Josh Siegel contributed to this report.
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