Congress

Van Hollen’s big moment: Defending a constituent and defying Trump

Published

1 year ago

April 18, 2025

Chris Van Hollen has spent nearly a decade as an under-the-radar lawmaker. But the Maryland Democrat, who gave up a leadership trajectory in the House to serve in the Senate, may now finally be meeting his moment.

Van Hollen has grabbed the national spotlight amid a two-day trip to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration on erroneous charges of gang membership. After being initially blocked from entering a maximum-security prison by the Salvadoran government, Van Hollen ultimately succeeded in sitting down Thursday with his constituent, who had since been transferred to another detention facility.

“If you deny the constitutional rights of one man, you threaten the constitutional rights and due process for everyone else in America,” Van Hollen said Friday at a press conference at Dulles International Airport, shortly after returning from El Salvador.

He was flanked by advocates holding signs emblazoned with the words, “Thank you Senator Van Hollen.”

The episode has vaulted Van Hollen into a new hero of the so-called resistance, with some progressives now seeing the 66-year-old lawmaker as someone who can provide a roadmap for how to fight President Donald Trump and effectively message about the human consequences of the administration’s immigration crackdown.

“We’re not in the majority, and we don’t control the legislative agenda on the floor; we have to take whatever creative steps we can outside of the normal course of business to influence events,” said House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin, Van Hollen’s successor in representing the suburban Washington district that’s home to a sizable Salvadoran population. “Van Hollen’s trip down there definitely helped to galvanize people’s attention and to keep it in the front of everybody’s mind.”

It’s also the latest leg of a long journey for Van Hollen that could now change the course of his career at a moment when Democrats are just starting to discuss the need for generational change atop the leadership ladder.

“We’ve been flailing since Trump won. I’d be lying if I said morale wasn’t shot over here,” said one Democratic aide for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which Van Hollen is a member.

“The Dems really need something to rally the troops,” said the aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “[Sen. Cory] Booker’s floor speech did that. Van Hollen’s trip is doing that.”

Democrats have found unity in opposing many of Trump’s policy priorities, but they’ve also struggled to get on the same page on a variety of issues since losing the White House, including immigration. They’ve also privately and publicly griped over their party’s inability to tamp down the lighting speed at which Trump’s MAGA agenda has upended norms while flouting Congress and the courts.

Van Hollen’s moves to defy the president — and take on a personal safety risk by going to El Salvador — have handed Democrats an antidote to some of their doom and gloom. Many progressives also consider Van Hollen’s framing of Abrego Garcia’s plight an example of the type of the principled stand on immigration that could help win back disaffected voters.

“If ever Democrats were looking for a strong place to pick a fight on immigration — the whisking people off the streets without due process … [this] is the place to pick the fight,” said Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Leah Greenberg, the cofounder of the anti-Trump advocacy group Indivisible, echoed the sentiment.

“This demonstrates that Democrats are moving to an alternate position, which is that, if you take a clear stance and you robustly defend it, you bring people along with you,” said Greenberg, whose group has been pushing Democrats to be more aggressive in their opposition to Trump.

Abrego Garcia was deported last month despite a judge’s ruling that he be allowed to remain in the United States because he faced a risk of being targeted by a gang in his homeland. A federal judge has since ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return and the Supreme Court has upheld the order.

But while Trump administration officials have acknowledged their error, they are refusing take steps to rectify the situation and have since doubled down in saying Abrego Garcia must remain in El Salvador. The episode has erupted in a political firestorm, with Van Hollen now in the eye.

“By the way, @ChrisVanHollen — he’s NOT coming back,” the White House posted Friday on social media.

El Salvador’s president and a staunch Trump ally, Nayib Bukele, also piled on.

“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” he posted on X with photos of the two meeting at a restaurant. There is no evidence that Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia were drinking cocktails.

Van Hollen was elected to the House in 2003, where he rose through the ranks to lead the party campaign arm through top cycles and serve as the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee — both positions to which he was appointed by Nancy Pelosi, then the House Democratic leader.

He was a member of Pelosi’s extended leadership circle for years, and there was extensive reporting about the Californian’s interest in positioning Van Hollen to succeed her when the time came to step aside. But when then-Sen. Barbara Mikulski announced she would retire in 2016, Van Hollen chose the comfort of a Senate seat over the gamble of remaining in the House with no guarantee of a promotion.

In the Senate, Van Hollen spent one term as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee but has otherwise served more quietly in the rank-and-file, his options limited in a caucus that frequently rewards seniority over ambition.

However, Van Hollen has also long been a champion of a human rights-centered foreign policy platform, even when it’s meant breaking with his own party or challenging U.S. allies. For instance, he emerged as a leading Senate critic of the Israeli government’s conduct during the war in Gaza, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of committing war crimes and urging then-President Joe Biden to withhold aid.

“If you know Senator Van Hollen, you know he is particularly passionate about international issues,” said fellow Maryland Democratic Rep. Sarah Elfreth. Separately, Raskin floated the possibility that Van Hollen could have been on “a very short list” to be Secretary of State if former Vice President Kamala Harris had won the presidency.

At the airport press conference Friday, Van Hollen nodded to his colleagues who were also exploring visits to El Salvador — and perhaps their own moments in the spotlight.

“I’ve told the vice president of El Salvador but I might be the first senator — the first member of Congress — to come down to El Salvador, but I won’t be the last,” he said. “There are others coming.”

Booker, who captured the nation’s attention when he recently broke the record for the longest talking filibuster on the Senate floor to protest Trump’s agenda, has said he is planning his own trip. Democratic Reps. Delia Ramirez of Illinois, Maxwell Frost of Florida and Robert Garcia of California have asked Republican committee chairs to organize official delegations, but Mark Green of Homeland Security and James Comer of Oversight have declined.

In a sign of how much the episode has become a partisan flashpoint, Ramirez said in a statement that her “Republican colleagues have continued to reinforce their complicity,” while Comer told Frost and Garcia in a letter they were welcome to “spend your own money” to drink “margaritas garnished with cherry slices with a foreign gang member.”

Van Hollen, at the press conference, dismissed accusations of “Margaritagate,” saying, “nobody drank any margaritas, or sugar water, or whatever,” and that prop drinks were placed on the table by Salvadoran government officials to create an a false impression.

In prepared remarks he said he drafted on the airplane home, he emphasized the legal rights that had not been afforded to Abrego Garcia and pledged to continue the fight to bring him back to Maryland, and that both the Trump administration and the government of El Salvador are complicit in an “illegal scheme.”

“This should not be an issue for Republicans or Democrats,” Van Hollen said. “This is an issue for every American who cares about our constitution, who cares about individual liberty, who cares about due process and who cares about what makes America so different, which is adherence to all these things. This is an American issue.”

Connor O’Brien, Joe Gould, Robbie Gramer and Ali Bianco contributed to this report.

Congress

Clean energy group sets its sights on a new GOP target: Lauren Boebert

Published

2 hours ago

October 7, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A clean energy group is launching a $1.5 million spend against Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), its latest effort this midterm cycle targeting Republicans who actively work against renewables.

The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition’s first ad in the spend, which was obtained by Blue Light News, focuses on an embarrassing incident for Boebert: when she was ejected from a live musical performance of “Beetlejuice” for allegedly vaping, singing and recording the show.

“If Lauren Boebert can’t be trusted in a room full of kids, then she can’t be trusted in the halls of Congress,” the ad says.

The spot makes no mention of clean energy or Boebert’s attacks on the so-called “Green New Scam.” The strategy mimics the group’s previous playbook that it has deployed to help defeat Reps. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) in their Republican primaries earlier this year, as the latter two sought statewide office. The PAC had tried to paint Ogles as an absentee member of Congress and Roy as insufficiently MAGA.

The group, which is backed by solar executives, has become an increasingly forceful player this cycle, which has seen a massive influx of outside spending.

“This industry has been villainized and used as a punching bag at times by the right, and the industry hasn’t always punched back,” said Chris Coffey, the CEO of Tusk Strategies, which is helping run the group. “Maybe when they’re deciding who to villainize next year, they will at least be like, ‘You know what? I don’t need problems with those guys.’”

Boebert’s district is historically deeply red. But Invest in Tomorrow also commissioned a poll, which shows she is underwater: 39% of likely voters view her favorably and 55% view her unfavorably. It also found Boebert leading the district’s Democratic nominee Eileen Laubacher by 5 points.

The poll, conducted by Impact Research from Sept. 21 to 24, polled 403 likely voters and had a margin of error of ±4.8%.

Congress

Trahan unveils AI liability discussion draft

Published

10 hours ago

October 7, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rep. Lori Trahan on Wednesday unveiled a discussion draft for a bill that would make artificial intelligence developers liable when their products cause harm.

The legislation comes after OpenAI’s agents escaped containment and autonomously hacked into AI platform Hugging Face and accessed U.S. government websites.

The Clear Liability for Artificial Intelligence Misconduct Act aims to make it easier for those harmed by so-called rogue AI to bring claims against developers. Trahan’s bill does not preempt new state laws on AI liability — historically a prerequisite for attracting Republican support in the House.

“When someone breaks the law and hurts you, you can take them to court. That shouldn’t change just because the wrongdoer is an AI agent,” Trahan (D-Mass.) said in a statement. “Developers have already built systems capable of acting on their own and causing real damage. The CLAIM Act makes sure they answer for what their systems do.”

Legal experts have warned that existing laws require proof of intent or negligence, standards that can be difficult to show in court when AI models go rogue.

Trahan’s bill would ensure AI developers are unable to argue that their AI systems are incapable of intent. Instead, courts “would presume an AI system acted with the state of mind a person taking the same actions would have had.”

Trahan spokesperson Francis Grubar said work on the CLAIM Act began almost immediately after theJuly introduction of the FRONTIER Act, legislation with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) that would grant the government power to restrict the deployment of AI models deemed to pose catastrophic risks. While that bill aims to prevent serious harms before they happen, Grubar said the CLAIM Act would address how to impose accountability for existing damages.

Unlike an AI liability proposal announced last week by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Trahan’s legislation would not amend the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Grubar said the CLAIM Act would instead impose clearer liability on a broader range of harms, as well as autonomous or AI-enabled cyberattacks.

The CFFA, an anti-hacking law that bars individuals from accessing a computer without consent, requires proof of intent to hack into a computer system, which can’t be as easily applied to AI agents.

The Hugging Face incident, along with a flurry of other disclosed hacking incidents by rogue AI agents from OpenAI and other AI developers, has sparked a debate over how companies should be held legally liable for their AI systems.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in an interview with Blue Light News’s Decoded podcast, said there should be a new “liability framework” to hold developers accountable for AI-powered cyberattacks. His comments come after White House officials like Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, who was recently appointed as AI czar by President Donald Trump, previously said that existing product liability laws are sufficient for now in addressing AI’s risks.

Congress

Vance to sit for CBS town hall in Michigan ahead of midterms

Published

10 hours ago

October 7, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Vice President JD Vance will take questions from Michigan voters in a CBS News town hall airing Oct. 17 as the Trump administration prepares a closing message to voters ahead of the midterms.

The town hall comes amid a blitz of campaign events for Vance and President Donald Trump as their party faces multiple headwinds that could cost them control of the House and Senate.

Michigan’s Senate contest between Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers has become one of the cycle’s closely watched battleground contests. Michigan also has several competitive House races and will elect a new governor for the first time in eight years.

Vance campaigned in Michigan with Rogers, gubernatorial nominee John James and Mike Bouchard Jr., the GOP nominee in the 10th Congressional District, at an Aug. 31 rally in Sterling Heights. Rep. Lisa McClain also appeared at the event.

The one-hour special, moderated by “CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil, will be recorded earlier in the week. Vance and Dokoupil will discuss issues facing voters, including affordability, tariffs, immigration, health care, artificial intelligence, the war with Iran and the state of American democracy, according to CBS News.

The two were scheduled for a town hall interview in March, but the vice president postponed due to the war with Iran.

The vice president’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.