Congress
Trump not expected to act on Pulte after Johnson meeting
A key U.S. spy law remains on track to expire at the end of the week after Speaker Mike Johnson met with President Donald Trump Tuesday about the future of a key section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Trump indicated in the private White House that he’s not inclined to appease Democrats and pave the way for a FISA extension by nominating a permanent director of national intelligence to succeed Bill Pulte, the acting director he installed last week, according to three people briefed on the conversation who were granted anonymity to describe it.
Most Democrats are refusing to move forward with any FISA extension so long as Pulte, a close political ally of the president with no national security experience, remains in the intelligence post. Some Republicans have been hoping a new Trump nomination could provide an off-ramp ahead of the quickly approaching FISA deadline.
But the people briefed on the meeting were left with the impression it didn’t go very well as Trump continues to push back on any suggestion that he needs to placate Democrats to pave the way for a FISA extension.
Johnson told reporters Tuesday the meeting went well but declined to discuss specifics. He added that “Democrats have taken a hostage” and that the Senate would need to quickly figure out a path forward.
Sen. Raphael Warnock met Tuesday with Speaker Mike Johnson after the Republican leader requested the Democratic senator privately discuss comments Warnock made regarding Johnson’s faith in a recent interview.
Warnock was asked in the New York Times Q&A about Johnson praying ahead of the passage last year of the GOP megabill that included tax cuts and reductions in social-service programs and how he “understands that.”
Warnock, the pastor of a prominent Atlanta church, responded that he is a “Matthew 25 Christian,” referencing the chapter of the Gospel where Jesus describes the responsibility of the faithful to treat the hungry, sick and foreign with compassion.
“I don’t understand how you read that, say a long prayer, hold hands with your fellow legislators, and then cut a trillion dollars — $1 trillion — out of Medicaid calling it waste, fraud, and abuse,” Warnock said.
Leaving the meeting in Johnson’s office, Warnock said he raised the very same point personally to the speaker on Tuesday.
“We talked about the policy, and we agreed to disagree,” he said. “But we also talked about our faith and our upbringing, and that, for me, was important because I think just at a human level it would help around this place if we had more authentic conversations across our differences.”
“The stakes are too high for us to be engaged in political fencing around here and not have authentic conversations at a human level about why you believe what you believe,” he continued. “And so I left hopeful that we might have more of that kind of conversation.”
Johnson struck a similar note in a statement: “I was happy to meet with Senator Warnock today and have a positive, fruitful discussion about matters of faith and our different opinions regarding public policy. Such dialogue is important because it is always more productive to have these conversations face to face.”
Warnock and a spokesperson for the speaker both confirmed Johnson requested the meeting after the Times interview was published.
Warnock described the tone of the approximately 30-minute meeting as “honest, candid” and “respectful.” He said that the two men exchanged phone numbers and agreed to stay in touch.
Johnson, a devout evangelical Christian, often talks about his faith as he navigates his slim majority and near-constant GOP infighting. He often cites the Bible and advised President Donald Trump earlier this year to take down a photo from his Truth Social account that depicted Trump as Jesus.
“I think there are people gathered in this building every week who go to church on Sunday,” Warnock said after the meeting. “And I just sometimes wonder what their preacher is preaching about. The gospels that I preach center the poor.”
Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime assistant Lesley Groff said in a closed-door interview Tuesday that she arranged phone calls between the late, disgraced financier and President Donald Trump, two Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee told reporters.
“I believe she referred to a time before, before Mr. Trump was president, that she did arrange for multiple phone calls between the two,” Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) said of Groff, who worked for Epstein for around 18 years beginning in 2001.
Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) also said that Groff told the panel that “she arranged calls for them to connect,” referring to the president and Epstein, but that those calls were not frequent.
Groff is on Capitol Hill to speak to the Oversight committee as part of its ongoing Epstein investigation. Trump has insisted he cut off ties with Epstein years before his death and has not been charged with any misconduct, but Democrats have repeatedly questioned whether the administration has worked to cover up evidence of a continued relationship.
“Just as President Trump has said, he’s been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson in a statement. “And by releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and calling for more investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, President Trump has done more for Epstein’s victims than anyone before him.”
Groff was never charged with any wrongdoing, but in a class-action lawsuit against the co-executors of Epstein’s estate, she is cited as “Epstein’s secretary who made travel arrangements for the girls, tended to their living needs, and scheduled massage sessions.” She also was named as an unindicted co-conspirator as part of Epstein’s 2008 non-prosecution agreement.
A key player in Epstein’s orbit throughout his life, Groff’s name is featured prominently in the Epstein files rolled out by the Justice Department late last year, showing her on the front lines of arranging meetings on her former boss’s behalf.
But behind closed doors Tuesday, lawmakers said Tuesday that Groff sought to distance herself from Epstein’s improprieties, telling the Oversight committee she did not see Epstein engage in misconduct.
Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.) said in an interview that he did not believe it was “remotely plausible” for Groff to be oblivious to Epstein’s deeds.
“He was a registered sex offender, and she arranged young women for massages with a registered sex offender, and I just question whether, whether she can rightfully and truthfully maintain that she saw nothing improper,” said Lynch.
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) said in an interview Monday night he was eager to “get [Groff] on the record, so that when we find out later she was lying, we can arrest her.”
An attorney for Groff did not return a request for comment.
House Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Ted Lieu hammered a bipartisan AI framework Tuesday, saying the proposal his colleagues introduced last week “cannot meet the enormity of the moment.”
Lieu, who is also one of three members on an AI commission convened by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, said at his weekly news conference that the regulatory blueprint championed by his fellow Californian, Republican Rep. Jay Obernolte — and Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) — “was not something that would work, because there’s a lot of issues it does not cover.”
Lieu said he welcomes other House Democrats to engage on the topic, but suggested that Trahan and Obernolte had failed to win over adequate support to make their framework politically viable. Their 269-page draft bill would, among other things, override some state AI laws, drawing attacks from many House Democrats and safety advocates.
“In Congress you have to build a consensus, you actually have to get groups and members of Congress and organizations to support what you’re trying to do,” Lieu added. “The particular framework that was released last week got intense pushback from the civil rights community, the labor community, AI safety folks — and so you know, if we’re to get something done, we need to build consensus and build a coalition, and that’s the first step that needs that.”
His unsparing comments are a blow not only to efforts to find common ground on a thorny policy matter, but also expose deeper rifts among Democrats as the party has struggled to coalesce around a unified vision for how to regulate the emerging technology.
Trahan has said she jumped into AI negotiations with Republicans because she is worried about mass economic and humanitarian disruption from Anthropic’s Mythos model, necessitating quick legislative action and cross-party dealmaking. Lieu said he is well aware of the urgency to produce a framework to regulate AI, insisting his commission would roll out its own proposal by the end of the year.
“Shortly after OpenAI released ChatGPT to the world, I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times that was titled, essentially, ‘AI freaks me out,’” Lieu said. “I am well aware of the urgency, many people are well aware of the urgency, so it’s not lost on the people working on this issue that we need to urgently get something done.”
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