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\n

Senate Democrats may be feeling pretty positive going into their final campaign sprint, but first they must deal with a handful of political headaches on Blue Light News.<\/p>\n

Democrats at their weekly caucus lunch Tuesday will talk strategy on a number of measures that could split members who have stuck together on other recent high-profile votes.<\/p>\n

Senate Democratic leaders expect a mostly unified caucus against a bill targeting data center costs and another restricting lawmaker\u2019s stock trading, according to a leadership aide, who acknowledged it\u2019s possible some members break ranks if it makes sense for them politically.<\/p>\n

Vote counts on a third bill on violence in the West Bank are less clear.<\/p>\n

With only five weeks until the midterms, senators will be weighing whether their votes will fly under constituents\u2019 radar, draw bad headlines or drive up donations for \u2014 or against \u2014 their campaigns. A unified party vote against a cryptocurrency bill this month, for example, spurred open industry discussions of punishing<\/u><\/a> Democrats and preceded a massive spending announcement against a key candidate.<\/p>\n

\u2014 DATA CENTER BILL:<\/b> Party leaders have been openly critical of the Ratepayer Protection Act, arguing it wouldn\u2019t adequately prevent costs of data center infrastructure from being shifted to the public. Several are also skeptical about granting a win to bill sponsor Sen. Jon Husted, who\u2019s in a tough race.<\/p>\n

A handful of Democrats, including Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, Alex Padilla and Brian Schatz were noncommittal Monday on their plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to talk about it,\u201d Shaheen said. \u201cI haven\u2019t gotten the details on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 STOCK TRADING BAN: <\/b>Democrats also must decide as soon as Wednesday on whether to get behind a House-passed bill restricting lawmakers and their families from stock trading.<\/p>\n

Only 13 House Democrats backed the bill, with many rejecting what they saw as a \u201cpoison pill\u201d provision on voter ID requirements. A vote for the bill would also notch a win for sponsor Sen. Pete Ricketts, who\u2019s also in a close race.<\/p>\n

Ricketts argued Monday Democrats should support the voter ID provisions that are \u201cdesired by 80 percent of Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 WEST BANK VIOLENCE: <\/b>Sens. Chris Van Hollen, Tim Kaine and Bernie Sanders plan to force a floor vote on a measure requiring a State Department report on violence in the West Bank, an issue that could tap into wider party divides on Israel.<\/p>\n

Van Hollen told Calen Monday he expects widespread support, with about half the caucus co-sponsoring the measure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we will,\u201d Van Hollen said. \u201cEverybody who wants the U.S. government to stick up for American citizens and Palestinians being terrorized by violent settlers needs to vote for this.\u201d<\/p>\n

What else we\u2019re watching:\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u2014 WHITE HOUSE AI MEETING LIGHT ON LAWMAKERS: <\/b>Tuesday’s White House meeting with AI executives could be light on Capitol Hill voices \u2014 with Speaker Mike Johnson the only lawmaker confirmed to attend<\/a> so far. Expected Silicon Valley attendees include Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Palantir CEO Alex Karp and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, according to six people familiar with the meeting plans.<\/p>\n

\n
\n \u2014 TRUMP CONTROVERSIES PILE ON GOP: <\/b>It\u2019s 35 days until the midterms, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune is still fending off some final curveballs<\/a> from President Donald Trump. White House decisions to air campaign-style ads with taxpayer funds while separately rescinding about a billion dollars in congressionally approved spending are the latest pre-midterm frustrations for GOP senators \u2014 who spent much of Monday fielding off-message questions about the president\u2019s latest actions.
\n
\n \u00a0<\/b>\n<\/p>\n

Owen Dahlkamp, Mia McCarthy and Jordain Carney<\/i> contributed to this report.<\/i>
\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate Democrats may be feeling pretty positive going into their final campaign sprint, but first they must deal with a handful of political headaches on Blue Light News. Democrats at their weekly caucus lunch Tuesday will talk strategy on a number of measures that could split members who have stuck together on other recent high-profile […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}