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{"id":27408,"date":"2026-10-05T09:04:42","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T09:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-dems-split-on-probing-trump-corporate-allies\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T09:04:42","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T09:04:42","slug":"capitol-agenda-dems-split-on-probing-trump-corporate-allies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-dems-split-on-probing-trump-corporate-allies\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitol agenda: Dems split on probing Trump corporate allies"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Democrats are eager to win <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/10\/05\/democrats-oversight-companies-trump-01106235\" target=\"_blank\">back subpoena power if they retake Congress<\/a>, but they\u2019re split on how hard they\u2019ll go after corporate America.<\/p>\n<p>The party is united by the idea of aggressive oversight of President Donald Trump\u2019s administration, which will help shape their messaging in the run-up to the 2028 election. But Democrats are at odds over how fiercely to use their probing power to go after the corporations, law firms and universities that courted the White House over the past two years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t want to turn into a banana republic where you lose an election and it\u2019s all about retribution,\u201d Rep. Bill Foster, a senior member of the Financial Services Committee, said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to be a little bit wise about when companies simply did something they had to do to survive this unprecedented level of corruption, compared to companies that actually got on board and profited more by being a partner in his corruption,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Some progressives counter that a restrained approach would sit uneasily with the party\u2019s base.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt would be political suicide for Democrats to campaign on fighting corruption and then turn around and go easy on the very companies that are facilitating it,\u201d said Ella Fanger, corporate power policy adviser at the liberal nonprofit group Demand Progress.<\/p>\n<p>Prime targets for some Democrats are the tech companies that have taken steps to be on the president\u2019s good side, like Apple, Amazon and Meta, which have all donated to Trump\u2019s ballroom effort. Major cryptocurrency players, including Coinbase, Ripple and Tether also chipped in for the ballroom, and will be subject to questioning from Democrats.<\/p>\n<p>The late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s networks and associates are also poised for probes \u2014 a push that has ensnared big banks like JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America in the past.<\/p>\n<p>Sen. Chris Murphy said the party should focus on the nexus between Trump and corporate corruption.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe should get to the bottom of the corrupt relationship that exists between corporations in this country and the Trump administration,\u201d Murphy said, pointing to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.murphy.senate.gov\/newsroom\/press-releases\/murphy-to-trump-fda-nominee-youve-done-a-pretty-good-job-of-avoiding-answering-questions\" target=\"_blank\">questions he\u2019s posed<\/a> about a tobacco company\u2019s donation <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/20\/us\/politics\/donation-big-tobacco-vaping.html\" target=\"_blank\">to Trump\u2019s super PAC<\/a> before new e-cigarette rules were unveiled.<\/p>\n<p>Still, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who serves on Senate Banking, warned against the weaponization of power.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur focus should be solving problems that we\u2019re seeing happening,\u201d she said, pointing to cost-of-living issues around health care, housing and energy.<\/p>\n<p><b><i>What else we\u2019re watching:\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>\u2014 FIRST IN IC:\u00a0BUILD AMERICA CAUCUS AGENDA \u2014\u00a0<\/b>Energized by progress on permitting and housing legislation this term, a bipartisan development-focused <a href=\"https:\/\/subscriber.politicopro.com\/article\/2026\/10\/build-america-caucus-abundance-agenda-01105755\" target=\"_blank\"><u>caucus is rolling out a detailed agenda<\/u><\/a> for next term. The 40-member Build America Caucus is releasing a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/f\/?id=000001a0-fe91-d600-a9bf-febf6d1d0000\" target=\"_blank\">95-page package of proposals<\/a>, first shared with Blue Light News, that outlines plans touching on health care, transportation, child care and research. The group launched last year with the goal of cutting red tape and regulatory bottlenecks to spur development.<\/p>\n<p><b>\u2014 AI COLLAB STILL ILLUSIVE FOR CRUZ, CANTWELL \u2014\u00a0<\/b>Commerce Chair Ted Cruz and ranking member Maria Cantwell might still be celebrating Senate passage of their landmark college sports bill last week, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/10\/05\/cruz-cantwell-college-sports-ai-01106003\" target=\"_blank\"><u>but it\u2019s unclear the momentum<\/u><\/a> will carry forward to agreement on another committee priority: artificial intelligence. Among the dozen lawmakers, aides and industry experts who spoke to Blue Light News, few expect the two senators to shed their well-established ideologies and styles after the mutual win. That could doom their ability to replicate their latest achievement in something as complex and divisive as an AI regulatory framework.<\/p>\n<p><i>Jasper Goodman, Katherine Hapgood, Riley Rogerson and Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.<\/i><br \/>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Democrats are eager to win back subpoena power if they retake Congress, but they\u2019re split on how hard they\u2019ll go after corporate America. The party is united by the idea of aggressive oversight of President Donald Trump\u2019s administration, which will help shape their messaging in the run-up to the 2028 election. But Democrats are at [&hellip;]<\/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-27408","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\/27408","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=27408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}