Congress

Trump is causing a midterm headache for this New Jersey congressmember

Published

7 months ago

March 2, 2026

Tom Kean Jr. faces the same problem as every other vulnerable Republican in the midterms: Donald Trump.

But the president is making it extra hard for Kean, a soft-spoken House member who has a cavalcade of Democrats seeking to oust him in his wealthy suburban New Jersey district, which includes the Bedminster golf course that doubles as a summer retreat for Trump.

It seems immaterial to Trump in his war against blue-state Democrats over immigration and more. The administration just purchased property in a Republican town for his aggressive immigration efforts and last month paused funding for a new tunnel linking New Jersey and New York, which is crucial for commuters in Kean’s district.

Both moves put Kean, a scion of New Jersey’s most famous political family, in a bind.

Even people close to the two-term congressmember acknowledge that Kean has not separated himself from a president who is deeply unpopular at home — especially in a year where Republicans are trying to hold their razor-thin majority in the House.

“It was already going to be tough because midterms are tough for the party in power. And I think on issues like this, Tom would be safe to carve a little space between him and the president,” said Mike DuHaime, a veteran strategist of many Republican campaigns.

But DuHaime, a longtime friend of Kean, acknowledged that the congressmember’s brand of behind-the-scenes advocacy may not work now. “I don’t know that it has been enough yet. Since Tom has gone to the national level, he has been less prone to kind of stick out from the majority,” he said.

Kean’s balancing act

New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District is winnable by either party. In 2024, Kean won reelection by five points and Trump carried the district by 1. But in 2025, when Democrat Mikie Sherrill won a landslide victory in the governor’s race over Republican Jack Ciattarelli, she carried the district by a little more than 1 point.

Like many Republicans in swing districts, Kean, who is running for his third term, finds himself in a balancing act when it comes to how closely to run with the president. While he is not one of Trump’s most vocal defenders in Congress — and has taken credit for negotiating with him to restore property tax deductions — Democrats have repeatedly sought to tie the two together, including pointing to votes Kean has made in support of tariffs. Trump endorsed Kean for the first time this cycle.

“Tom Kean Jr. has a tougher voting record than he did last cycle,” said Rebecca Bennett, one of several Democrats competing to challenge Kean. “This is the first time he’s running with a Republican president in office.”

Kean consultant Harrison Neely pushed back on the criticism, saying that he “leads, focuses on results over rhetoric, and puts the needs of New Jersey first every time.”

“Congressman Kean will be reelected because voters see an independent leader who delivers results,” Neely said in a statement. “He has stood up for New Jersey and fought for middle class tax relief including fully restoring the SALT Deduction, held his ground to keep the Gateway Tunnel moving, and delivered tens of millions of dollars and counting for first responders and community projects across the district.”

National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Maureen O’Toole echoed that sentiment, saying he “has always put New Jerseyans first” and accusing Democrats of lying about Kean’s record. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Democrats last year won Assembly seats long held by Republicans in two districts that partially overlap with Kean’s. That includes the 21st District, which Kean represented for two decades. His successor, Republican state Sen. Jon Bramnick, who unsuccessfully ran for governor last year with an anti-Trump platform, watched both his Republican running mates lose to Democrats.

“It’s so obvious when you look at the poll of Trump, you look at the Jack Ciattarelli catastrophe, you look at losses in my district that we haven’t lost in decades,” Bramnick said, stressing he was commenting on Trump hurting Republicans in New Jersey generally and not specifically on Kean. “I’ve got Republicans who tell me ‘You’re just anti-Trump.’ No, no no. I am anti-losing.”

‘Trying to soften the blow’

During the gubernatorial race, Trump threw a wrench into Ciattarelli’s messaging by announcing that the Gateway project — which centers on replacing of the decaying century-old rail tunnel between New Jersey and New York City — was “terminated.” Since then, his administration has sent mixed messages on its future and has fought to hold up its already-appropriated funding, leading to Sherrill and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul successfully taking him to court to release the money.

But as the Trump administration continues to fight to freeze the funds, Kean has offered only mild criticism, saying he sympathizes with Trump’s concerns about potential cost overruns — the latest in a string of shifting justifications for the funding freeze. “Where I differ is that I believe Gateway is too important to delay and that we can advance the project while still protecting taxpayers,” he said.

It’s unclear how long the fight over Gateway funding will last — potentially making it less salient of an issue in the campaign come November, as opposed to in the gubernatorial race when such debates happened right as voters hit the polls. But a potentially more enduring issue also hovers over NJ-07.

ICE last week purchased a massive warehouse in Roxbury, a heavily-Republican town in the district, to use as a detention center. Left-leaning residents had shown up to town council meetings en masse to protest the purchase during the weeks of rumors that led up to it, and the town’s all-Republican government also opposed it on the grounds that it would strain local infrastructure. Shockingly, the town’s government criticized Kean for failing to stop it, saying in a joint statement that he “did not engage to the level we had hoped to provide the advocacy our residents deserved.”

Days later, Kean introduced legislation to create a grant program for the Department of Homeland Security to reimburse local governments for expenses related to federal facilities.

“The overwhelming majority of residents, along with the state and the country, support getting criminal illegal migrants off our streets and stopping the flow of Fentanyl,” Kean said in a statement. “We need to, and will, keep a level head as we continue to work constructively to deliver results.”

Brian Varela, another Democrat running to challenge Kean, pointed out that by introducing the bill, Kean is “not even coming out against the detention center.”

“He’s just trying to soften the blow and improve his image coming out of all this,” Varela said.

The ICE facility is especially politically troubling for Kean, said pollster Patrick Murray, who sees a “pincer movement” of heightened Democratic enthusiasm in the district’s denser eastern suburbs and potentially depressed Republican enthusiasm in its exurban western portions. Trump’s approach to immigration is largely unpopular among New Jerseyans, according to a recent survey conducted by the Stockton Polling Institute.

“Republican voters are feeling the negative impacts of the Trump administration and he’s not standing up to it. That’s going to cost him,” Murray said.

Congress

Poll: China fears drive polarization on AI regulations

Published

2 hours ago

September 17, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Americans are divided on whether it’s acceptable to fall behind other countries in the race to develop advanced artificial intelligence. So is Congress.

A new POLITICO Poll finds that Americans broadly recognize serious risks from frontier AI models, but many — particularly President Donald Trump’s voters — also prioritize maintaining a lead over other countries, including China.

Even as 63% of the poll’s respondents 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 in order to mitigate that risk.

A plurality, 43%, say it is acceptable for the U.S. to fall behind other countries if that means developing AI more responsibly and securely, while 37% take the opposite view, saying the U.S. should not stand down, even if that requires taking risks. Voters who backed Trump in 2024 favor the competition-first position by 50% to 38%.

That split is already playing out on Capitol Hill as AI safety zooms to the center of congressional conversations. With legislation only slowly taking shape, fear of international competition stands to be a major point of tension during any bipartisan negotiations — with most lawmakers’ views divided closely along party lines.

Many Republican lawmakers said in interviews this week that pausing AI development could give China an opening to overtake U.S. capabilities. Democrats are also looking over their shoulders at Chinese advances, but they are cautioning that competition is not a reason for Congress to avoid instituting AI guardrails.

“The AI race is not an arms race that you win,” Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) said during Wednesday’s Blue Light News Decoded Summit. “It’s an arms race that we need to end, and we need to protect the American people.”

Casar, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has teamed up with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in calling for a ban on “superintelligence” to stave off the existential threats to humanity — a concern that bubbled to the fore last week when a former Anthropic researcher warned AI could “kill us all.”

Senior Republicans are denigrating proposals like Casar’s, arguing that the U.S. cannot risk Chinese AI dominance. Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), chair of the powerful House committee overseeing the tech industry, said as much at the summit.

“We absolutely can’t surrender,” he said. “And I think that’s what it would be if we stopped AI development.”

Guthrie further argued AI legislation is too complex to rush and that the Energy and Commerce Committee he leads might not take up AI legislation before next year. That sentiment is in line with Speaker Mike Johnson, who said this week that the U.S. must “maintain our edge over China.” Meanwhile, Trump has called the AI panic a “HOAX” and said that federal regulations would allow China to leapfrog the U.S.

Some Republicans have been almost flippant about the dilemma policymakers face in reconciling a potentially dangerous technology with their fear of Chinese competition.

“If there are going to be killer robots, I’d rather they be American killer robots,” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said in a recent POLITICO interview. Like Guthrie, Cruz chairs a committee overseeing tech matters.

Among the bipartisan group of lawmakers who have locked arms in warning about the Chinese threat on other fronts, the familiar partisan divide is still emerging on AI regulation.

“We can lead in innovation and lead in safety,” said Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.), who sits on the bipartisan Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. “So if Trump or anyone else comes at it that we can only do one but not the other, he’s not looking at the history of the United States of America.”

Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a moderate Republican China hawk, said he is “very reluctant to hinder AI” via regulation.

“They’re going to have to make the good case why we need it,” he said. “We don’t want to hinder our AI research. We can’t afford to fall behind China.”

Some, however, are being careful to strike a balanced tone as the AI safety conversation kicks into high gear.

Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House China panel, 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.”

“There’s economic benefits to that,” he said. “There’s national security issues, but we want to have common sense and a deliberative process.”

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), an Intelligence Committee member and a co-chair of House Democrats’ AI commission, said China is “not waiting for anyone else.”

“So you can’t just leave the race, but you need to make sure you do it in the right way,” he added.

Opinions are sharper when it comes to Trump’s upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping next week and whether he should even broach some type of cooperation on AI safety.

“I don’t trust him,” Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said when asked if Trump should engage with Xi on AI. “I trust Trump.”

But many Democrats say it’s a mistake to engage in an AI arms race, with some explicitly reaching for analogies with the nuclear arms race that ended in Cold War treaties with a former global rival — the Soviet Union — limiting bomb tests and missile deployments.

Rep. Ted Lieu of California, another co-chair of the Democratic AI commission, said Trump could start small by asking Xi to “commit that they’re never going to let AI launch a nuclear weapon by itself.”

“There are things that we can do to get other countries to follow the lead the U.S. has taken in AI,” he said.

Congress

Democrats keep pressure on Hakeem Jeffries to punish rogue members

Published

10 hours ago

September 17, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Democrats aren’t letting rogue members off the hook for bucking their party. They hope Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries won’t either.

“Obviously, there’s got to be” punishment for the two Democrats who twice this month bucked their party to advance a slate of Republican priorities, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said in an interview.

“Otherwise, then,” he said, “it’s open season.”

Democrats are watching closely how — and if — Jeffries doles out consequences for Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington who have twice provided the decisive votes for GOP procedural measures this month. Jeffries and his leadership team condemned the two members when they first defected two weeks ago, slamming a “breach of trust” warranting a “serious response” but have yet to inflict any public consequences.

On Tuesday, they defied leadership a second time, infuriating House Democrats and resurrecting questions about how leadership plans to keep its caucus in line — especially if they have a slim majority next term.

“We have to all be united, and I think it’s pretty simple,” said one House Democrat who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “If there’s not [a punishment], I find it hard to see a path forward in the majority, which we’re all pushing for.”

Asked if leadership should punish the two aisle-crossers, Rep. Troy Carter pointed to his time as minority leader of the Louisiana state Senate: “When I had members that did not work within the confines of the philosophical views of our party, I took them off our caucus.”

“I don’t want to second-guess anybody’s timing, but I will tell you that these things cannot allow to fester,” he added. “We have to have a strict message: Either you’re with the team on those fundamental issues of governance or you aren’t.”

Multiple members, including Carter, said that removing Gluesenkamp Perez from the Appropriations Committee should be considered. (While members are just as angry at Golden, they acknowledge he’s beyond punishment given he is retiring at the end of this term.)

“I suspect that there are a number of appropriate consequences that [leaders] could implement,” Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) said in an interview. “And, ultimately, it’s their decision. I certainly don’t want that to be a caucus decision. That should be a leadership decision.”

One leader, Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, suggested she is open to removing Gluesenkamp Perez from Appropriations, telling reporters Wednesday morning that “team players get to sit on exclusive committees.”

After the first instance where the two Democrats defected on Sept. 1, Jeffries kicked the matter to a caucus rules panel, saying afterward he wanted to pursue action against the two members “sooner rather than later.” The panel continues to deliberate on what should happen if members vote with Republicans on procedural measures.

Jeffries said that week that he’d had a “productive” and “forward-looking” conversation with Gluesenkamp Perez, but he has said much less after Tuesday’s floor drama.

“I’ll have more to say about the issue when I have more to say about the issue,” he told Blue Light News shortly after the vote.

Congress

House passes Russia sanctions bill, handing Trump more leverage against Moscow

Published

12 hours ago

September 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The House passed the sweeping Russia sanctions bill long championed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham on Wednesday, sending the legislation to the White House for President Donald Trump’s signature after more than a year of congressional maneuvering.

The 262 to 159 vote ends a nearly two-year lull in Ukraine assistance from Congress, which had not passed any major Ukraine efforts since a 2024 emergency aid package. The bill faced a number of obstacles on the path to the Resolute Desk, including significant opposition from some House Democrats who argued that the bill would give the White House too much tariff power.

After weathering a number of storms to make it out of Capitol Hill, the legislation is all but guaranteed to get Trump’s signature.

The long-anticipated legislation issues mandatory sanctions on Russia’s leadership and energy sector — as well as new sanctions on collaborators in Moscow’s defense industry and its so-called shadow fleet. Advocates of the bill, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have argued it would give the White House necessary tools to squeeze Russia economically, curbing the flow of funds to Moscow’s war machine.

But, to many Democrats’ dismay, the legislation also includes a 100% tariff on top buyers of Russian energy. Opponents of the bill have cautioned that the tariff provision would hand another cudgel for Trump to use against not only U.S. foes but also global allies — an action the White House has repeatedly taken since Trump returned to office.

“We cannot grant more tariff power that we know he will abuse,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) said in comments on the House floor Wednesday.

Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, argued that the tariffs would worsen the economic pain already felt by everyday Americans and that without a security assistance package or more air defense, they would not do enough to concretely help Ukraine.

In comments on the House floor earlier Wednesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries outlined why he planned to withhold support for the measure.

“The manner in which this bill has been written doesn’t require the president of the United States to impose sanctions on Russia,” Jeffries said. “In fact, there are so many loopholes written into the bill, I believe, that it’s very unlikely that the sanctions relief contemplated in the legislation will ever see the light of day.”

That disagreement has caused a growing rift among Democrats in recent days. Fifty-eight House Democrats broke with Jeffries to vote yes on the measure.

In a letter addressed to House Democrats, Senate Foreign Relations ranking member Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) urged her colleagues to pass the legislation, warning that failing to do so would send a dangerous message to both Russian leader Vladimir Putin and other international foes.

“Congress’s failure to impose additional costs would send a dangerous signal,” Shaheen wrote. “The Kremlin is watching. Kyiv is watching. Our NATO allies are watching. So are Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang.”