A late-night legal filing from the Justice Department was viciously mocked Wednesday after it exposed the Trump administration’s argument to a federal judge for why President Donald Trump’s White House media ban should remain in place.
“DOJ's attempt to justify Trump's CNN et al. press ban will make you laugh, it'll make you cry,” wrote Ira Goldman, a former congressional lawyer and government policy adviser, in a social media post on X.
Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House last week, and the three outlets subsequently sued the Trump administration for alleged First Amendment violations, requesting that U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly grant them a temporary restraining order and immediately block Trump’s ban.
As flagged by prominent international law scholar Ryan Goodman, the DOJ filed an opposition brief just “before midnight” on Tuesday, asking that Kelly deny the plaintiffs’ request. But buried within the brief were what some critics described as laughable legal arguments.
One example saw the Trump administration argue that Politico’s reporting on the Republican National Committee midterm convention earlier this month was factually incorrect.
“In September 2026, Politico Playbook relied on unnamed sources to paint the Republican midterm convention in Dallas as a disaster,” reads a letter sent from the White House to the banned media outlets that was included in the DOJ’s opposition brief as an exhibit. “Media reporting showed that the convention had over 100 million live stream views.”
Another argument from the Trump administration was that reporting on national security “diverts White House resources,” with the administration citing an August report from MS NOW on the United States’ “significantly depleted” supply of munitions amid its war against Iran. As noted by Goodman, MS NOW’s source for its reporting was a public document published in the Federal Register.
“They’re calling it the losingest losing argument of all time,” quippedAaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration lawyer and senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
Philip J. Velez, a New York immigration attorney, argued the Trump administration was seeking to overturn New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, a landmark 1964 Supreme Court decision that established strong protections for the press against libel suits from public officials.
Before midnight, DOJ told Judge Kelly the press ban of CNN, MSNow, Politico is based on their National Security reporting.
But examples are core First Amendment protected reporting.
The Justice Department has launched a probe into Darren Indyke, Epstein's longtime lawyer, and Richard Kahn, his accountant, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter.
Both men now serve as executors of Epstein's estate.
Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have reportedly spent recent months "scheduling interviews with potential witnesses and have requested documents about their dealings with Indyke, Epstein’s lawyer, and Kahn, his accountant," the Journal reported on Wednesday.
People interviewed described Kahn's and Indyke's roles in legal entities allegedly used to "conceal Epstein's conduct," along with their handling of financial and legal matters involving young women — though the Journal couldn't determine what charges, if any, are being explored.
Indyke and Kahn have long denied wrongdoing, according to the report.
Testifying before the House Oversight Committee in March, Indyke stated in his prepared remarks: "My complete lack of involvement in that misconduct is a matter of record: not a single woman has ever accused me of committing sexual abuse or witnessing sexual abuse, nor claimed at any time that she or anyone else reported to me any allegation of Mr. Epstein's abuse."
A lawyer for Kahn referred back to the men's prior denials; a lawyer for Indyke didn't respond to the Journal's request for comment. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office declined to comment.
On "the sidelines" of the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, Trump said he's considering restricting diesel exports as prices hit record highs just weeks before the midterms, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The comment "blindsided" oil executives, including some Trump donors, who believed they'd already won the fight to keep shipments flowing, and lobbyists reportedly scrambled to call White House officials and congressional Republicans to register their objections. It didn't matter — insiders now say some form of export limit looks "inevitable," the Journal reported.
"I think we've invested too much in developing customers overseas, and this is the wrong signal," Dan Eberhart, CEO of oil-field services firm Canary and a Trump donor, told the Journal.
According to the Journal report, "Even if the measure is temporary, U.S. oil companies stand to lose billions of dollars in revenue if they aren’t allowed to ship diesel abroad."
Trump is giving every indication that he is siding with vulnerable Republicans over his own oil-industry allies: Iowa Republicans, including Sen. Chuck Grassley, have pushed hard for a ban, arguing "sky-high diesel costs" are crushing farmers. A White House official said Trump "wants to see gas prices at the pump fall and is evaluating all options on the table."
One energy consultant with ties to refiners told the Journal, "It's all hands on deck. But it doesn't matter. We're not debating policy anymore. They've got to win a couple of key Senate races. The only way to do that is to put the export ban in temporarily."
Industry officials warn the move could backfire by spurring "international prices for the fuel to skyrocket" and lead to "retaliation' from other countries — the kind of unintended consequences that have already drawn scorn from Wall Street Journal's own editorial board.
CNN anchor John Berman was left searching for words Wednesday morning after chief data analyst Harry Enten walked through President Donald Trump's collapse among the voters who helped return him to the White House.
A new CNN poll shows Trump at a record-low approval rating, and Enten said the numbers underneath that headline figure are even worse, especially with "pure independents" – voters who don't lean toward either party.
In 2024, Trump beat Kamala Harris among those voters by 15 points, according to Enten's average of two validated voter surveys. Now, averaging multiple polls, Trump's net approval with the group is minus 71 points.
"These are the deep depths of the ocean – you never see numbers like these," Enten said. He called it "an 86-point shift away from the president of the United States with the group that ultimately really does determine elections."
"As pure independents go, usually, so goes the nation," he added.
Pure independents trusted Trump over Harris on the economy by 22 points in 2024. His net approval on the issue is now minus-77, a 99-point swing. In CNN's poll alone, Enten said, Trump's approval on the economy among pure independents was about 7 percent.
"When you can put approval ratings on your two hands and you're not even taking up the full two hands, you know it is low," Enten said.
"You run out of adjectives here to describe how big this shift is," Berman added.
Enten said gas prices, which have climbed sharply over the past month, are driving independent support into what he called "the deep depths of hell, as far as you're concerned, if you're a Republican running for re-election this fall."
Just 8 percent of pure independents approve of Trump's handling of gas prices, while 92 percent disapprove, and Enten said Republicans' odds of holding the Senate have fallen as prices have climbed.
When Berman noted that the disapproval was nearly unanimous, Enten offered a comparison.
"You get 8 percent of folks agreeing on something that is below the percentage of the Americans who actually think the moon landing was fake," Enten said, "and of course, that was very real."
Hours after Trump warned he could "annihilate" Iran's regime during his Tuesday address to the General Assembly, the Rupert Murdoch-owned paper's editors argued the threat would land harder if Trump hadn't already worn it out. The warning would be more credible "if we and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps hadn't heard it several times by now," the board wrote, noting this year's speech was comparatively subdued — "no escalator sabotage" — with the drama confined to the annihilation threat itself.
The editors doubted Iran's regime would suddenly surrender its nuclear stockpile or drop its claim to the Strait of Hormuz, warning Trump could be "blindsided again" the way he was when Tehran blew off an earlier cease-fire. They also noted Iran may be "banking on the midterms" to force Trump's hand — but argued that bet could backfire, since a second-term president freed of election pressure "will have two years left in office, with no political threat hanging over his head" and might prosecute the war "with less restraint."
Adding to the whiplash: later Tuesday, Trump said a three-hour meeting with Iranian representatives had gone "very well," raising fresh hope for a diplomatic off-ramp. The board argued Trump's constant swings between annihilation and peace talks have left "exhausted Americans" unsure what to believe.
"Iran is going to heed what the President does, not what he threatens to do," the editors predicted. "When the annihilation talk rings false, it hurts U.S. deterrence around the world. It also hurts Mr. Trump at home because it doesn’t look like the U.S. is winning. He’s better off explaining his strategy to win the war and for seeing it through—before and after the midterms."
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), just back to the Senate after a 92-day absence, is leading a Republican push for President Donald Trump's administration to release $1.3 billion in stalled military aid to Taiwan.
The 84-year-old McConnell and three GOP colleagues, Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), sent a letter Wednesday to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asking why the State Department hasn't released $300 million in foreign military financing that Congress set aside for Taiwan in the 2026 budget, reported The Washington Sun.
The Republicans also asked why the Pentagon hasn't released another $1 billion through the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative, and they challenged the administration's freeze on a $14 billion arms package.
"We are concerned by President Trump's description of Taiwan as 'a very good negotiating chip' in engagements with Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party," the senators wrote.
The letter comes one day before Trump hosts Xi at the White House. Reuters reported that the Chinese leader is expected to push for limits on U.S. arms sales to the island. In May, Trump said he was holding the weapons package "in abeyance," calling it "a very good negotiating chip for us."
The Taiwan financing expires Sept. 30, and the State Department missed a Sept. 15 deadline to notify Congress under the normal process, a congressional aide told the Sun. Jordan, Israel, Thailand and the Philippines have already been approved for funds from the same budget – Taiwan has not.
Other Republicans are also urging Trump to hold firm. Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) criticized Trump's lavish reception for Xi in a floor speech Tuesday, saying the president should keep in mind that his guest is "a brutal, unelected and oppressive dictator who seeks to dominate his neighbors."
Michael Pillsbury, who has advised Trump on China, said Chinese officials see Trump as more flexible on Taiwan than Joe Biden was. "Taiwan leadership is quite worried," Pillsbury said.
The freeze could also undercut Trump's own demand that Taiwan raise defense spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2030.
Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council, said Taipei budgeted for the weapons based on U.S. assurances. Money it doesn't spend goes back to its treasury at the end of the year. "It's lost money," he said.
McConnell, the longtime Senate majority leader who is retiring when his term ends in January, was first hospitalized June 14, two days after his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, arrived in China for a preplanned trip.
He remained hospitalized for several weeks, and his long-term absence and a lack of clarity about his health prompted months of speculation until he returned, looking frail, to vote in the Senate last week.
As President Donald Trump’s approval ratings continue to plummet to career lows, First Lady Melania Trump weighed in on her husband’s job performance Wednesday when pressed for her opinion on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”
“How's the president doing in Trump 2 as compared to Trump 1?” asked Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade. “How do you see him handling the job differently?”
After a brief pause, Mrs. Trump described her husband as being “very focused,” despite having “a lot on his plate.”
“It's very different, what's going on around the world now, but I think he's doing the best that he can,” Mrs. Trump said. “He works nonstop, he has the most energy than anybody, he's, from morning to evening, nonstop working.”
A smiling Kilmeade concurred with Mrs. Trump’s assessment: “That’s what we see,” he said, before praising the first lady for also “working nonstop.”
Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt, referencing the “Melania” film that was released earlier this year to overwhelmingly negative reviews — and whose director appeared in the Justice Department’s release of Jeffrey Epstein-related files — told the first lady what she hoped her next film might feature.
“I hope in the next movie, you take us into your closet because you dress so beautifully, always!” Earhardt said.
Brian Kilmeade: How's the president doing in Trump 2 as compared to Trump 1?
Trump ally Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was issued a blunt fact check Wednesday on Fox News after attacking New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani with a false claim.
On Tuesday, ahead of his address to the United Nations General Assembly, Netanyahu released a video on social media condemning the progressive New York mayor, vowing to expose the Democratic socialist for “inciting violence” against Jewish Americans.
“Shame on you Mr. Mamdani! Shame on you for supporting the Hamas terrorist monsters who butchered our people!” Netanyahu said. “Shame on you for inciting violence against New York Jews! I'm coming to the U.N., I'm gonna tell the truth about our heroic soldiers, and I'm gonna tell the truth about you!”
Netanyahu’s remarks were discussed Wednesday morning on “Fox & Friends,” with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade asking his colleague Trey Yingst, reporting live from Tel Aviv, Israel, about the spat: “He made it clear he's not happy with Mayor Mamdani, right?”
“He did, he released a video saying that Mayor Mamdani strongly supported Hamas, which... isn't true,” Yingst said.
“We do know that [Mamdani] condemned Hamas and called the Oct. 7 attack a war crime, but the Israeli prime minister certainly doesn't agree with the characterization of what followed after the Oct. 7 massacre and some of the comments that were made by the New York mayor. So we may hear some of that in those remarks today at the U.N.”
Netanyahu has called President Donald Trump “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House,” and boasted about having “almost daily conversations” with Trump during the second Trump administration. Netanyahu is expected to address the U.N. on Wednesday, just one day after Trump threatened to “annihilate” Iran during his U.N. address on Tuesday, remarks that The New York Times’ Farnaz Fassihi described as a clear threat to carry out a “war crime.”
Israeli PM Benjamin Netenyahu’s smear against NYC Mayor Mamdani fact-checked by Fox News’ Trey Yingst
“He released a video saying that Mayor Mamdani strongly supported Hamas, which... isn't true.” pic.twitter.com/LTEZgk6FPR — Alexander Willis (@ReporterWillis) September 23, 2026
Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) wants Congress back in Washington, but experts and critics pointed out that it's a curious ask from a lawmaker whose own party leadership shipped everyone home until after the midterms.
The Iowa Senate candidate, already reeling from backlash over her Iran war flip-flop, posted Tuesday that "The House should return to DC immediately to work to pause diesel exports, suspend the gas tax, fully unleash E15 and biodiesel, and work on a diesel relief program for truckers and farmers. Americans need relief and I'll work with anyone to deliver." She was responding to an Axios report that Trump now backs a ban on diesel exports.
It's the latest reversal from the representative, and political insiders suspect internal polling is the cause. Hinson spent months privately calling the war a "political liability" while publicly shrugging it off as "out of sight, out of mind," then pivoted to demanding it end after she'd voted six times to let it continue. Now she's demanding Washington reconvene, days after Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters "the House has done its work" and sent members home to campaign — with Hinson's blessing at the time.
Critics wasted no time. The Lincoln Project needled her twice, first asking "Those internal polls must look crazy, huh?" then reminding her "You voted for this. SIX times. Iowa, vote her out." Anti-Trump GOP strategist Sarah Longwell agreed that the "internals must look scary."
Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu had a simpler suggestion: "Um, have you tried calling your GOP Speaker?" Radio veteran Jamie Dupree made the same point, noting GOP lawmakers "were sent home until after the elections by their own leaders" and now want back in to handle "affordability issues that Republicans avoided in 2026."
Journalist Adam Carlson zeroed in on the timing, asking whether Hinson "just discover[ed]" record diesel prices or "just started caring" after "terrifying internal polling over the weekend." AIPAC Tracker piled on with the reminder that Hinson has voted against ending the Iran war four times this year. GasBuddy's Patrick De Haan and Vox's Matthew Yglesias mocked the substance itself, with Yglesias simply writing: "lmao 'fully unleash E15 and biodiesel.'"
Former prosecutor Ron Filipkowski put it most bluntly, calling the statement "performative nonsense to distract from the damage her own votes did to her constituents thanks to the cult leader she obeys."
With the midterms just 42 days out, Senate Republicans are facing their own version of the House GOP's great escape — and they can't decide whether to stay and fight or just go home, according to new reporting.
"Anxious" Republicans see little chance of passing anything meaningful before Election Day and are stuck with a "fight or flight" choice, Politico reported on Wednesday.
House Republicans have already bailed on Washington until after the Nov. 3 vote, while the Senate spends this week on a bipartisan bill overhauling college sports — hardly the affordability fix voters are demanding as they increasingly blame President Donald Trump for their financial pain.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) summed up the party's paralysis when asked about cost-of-living legislation. "If there was something that we could get done that would help, I'd be all for it," Cramer said. "But I don't know what it would be at this point."
"Should they leave, Republican senators would be essentially standing pat with their legislative record, even with voters clamoring for more help while blaming Trump in a spate of recent polling," Politico reported.
Staying in town means senators must keep facing reporters' questions on the Iran war, soaring energy prices, Trump's White House media ban, and revelations a Russian oligarch bankrolled his son's wedding — "Trump-related controversies" GOP lawmakers would rather keep at arm's length.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) isn't ready to give up on legislating, though.
He called it "stupid" not to push through the procedural hurdles to get Sen. Jon Husted's college sports bill to a vote. "When moms and dads lie down and sleep at night, and can't, they're not lying there worried about the football coaches, they're worried about the cost of living," Kennedy said. "It's foolish both policy-wise and political-wise not to put it on the floor. … I wouldn't faint with surprise if Senator Thune said, 'Y'all go home.'"
The dilemma underscores just how thin the GOP's pre-election playbook has become with control of Congress on the line.
President Donald Trump urged Republicans to treat the midterms as a referendum on him. A new poll suggests many voters plan to do exactly that – just not the way he hoped.
"I'm asking you to pretend that I'm on the ballot," Trump told Republicans at an unprecedented midterm convention in Dallas earlier this month, but a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found a plurality of registered voters, 45 percent, say their vote for Congress is a vote against Trump.
That includes roughly four in five Democrats and about half of independents, but about a quarter say their vote is meant to support the president, including 59 percent of Republicans and 51 percent of those who voted for Trump in 2024. About a third say Trump isn't much of a factor.
Overall, voters prefer Democratic congressional candidates over Republicans by a 53-to-41 margin, and that 12-point edge is a 13-point swing from Trump's 2024 popular-vote margin. It helps explain why Democrats are competitive in Senate races in Ohio, Alaska, Iowa and Texas – states Trump won by 11 to 14 points.
The poll also points to an enthusiasm gap. Compared with Kamala Harris voters, Trump's 2024 voters are less likely to say they're closely following the midterms and less likely to care who controls Congress. They are also less likely to have been contacted by someone urging them to vote.
Trump's own standing remains near record lows. Just 39 percent approve of his job performance and 59 percent disapprove. The 53 percent who strongly disapprove is the highest share recorded across both of his terms, and his favorability has slid from 44 percent in January 2025 to 37 percent in the latest poll.
Republicans have also lost ground on issues that have long been party strengths. Voters now narrowly favor Democrats on immigration, 41 percent to 38 percent. In February 2024, Republicans led on the issue 42 percent to 30 percent.
Democrats also lead on the economy (42 percent to 38 percent), foreign policy (42 percent to 36 percent) and gas prices (40 percent to 27 percent), as the Iran war drags on and fuel costs climb.
Some Republican candidates are already distancing themselves from the president.
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) released an ad telling Trump that "some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far," and this week, Senate nominees Ashley Hinson of Iowa and Mike Rogers of Michigan reversed course to back ending the Iran war and suspending gas taxes. Diesel prices in both states have hit record highs, according to AAA.
The survey of 1,280 respondents was conducted Sept. 14-15 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Move over AI doomsday scenarios. Republicans seem to innately trust rapidly evolving artificial intelligence technology — even as they distrust the largest AI companies so much they’ve started spinning new conspiracies on Capitol Hill.
Terrifying warnings from many at the top of the AI revolution — including from an industry insider who warned the creations he was involved in could destroy the human race within 10 years, and urged the government to set up guardrails — were shrugged off by multiple Republicans.
The dystopian predictions were no more than an effort to bolster the AI insiders' own businesses, GOP lawmakers who spoke to Raw Story said.
"There was an awful lot of what appeared to be rent-seeking by giant companies saying, 'please put the government in charge of everything and lock us into market dominance and stop any new competitors from challenging our market dominance,'" Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) — who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee — told Raw Story while walking through the U.S. Capitol.
“People came to me when I was governor all the time, ‘Oh, you need to regulate us’ — that means I don't want any competition,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Raw Story while riding an elevator to the Senate floor. “If you have a family, you shouldn't be building something that's going to kill your family.”
“Are they generating their own demand for future security products?” Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) asked Raw Story in the Capitol’s basement. “I don't think you need to slow down, because China's not slowing down, but what you need to do is make sure they're focusing their engineering effort on safety.”
Some of the starkest warnings about AI now come from inside the industry. In September 2026, researcher Jacob Coxon quit Anthropic, saying AI companies are gambling with our lives and that builders privately fear it could kill everyone by decade's end.
Anthropic's alignment lead, Evan Hubinger, agreed, putting the odds of that happening at above 10% within ten years and admitting there's no plan yet to align superintelligence.
With so many competing AI proposals floating around, Democrats are far from monolithic on how to rein in artificial intelligence, but most are unified in eye-rolling over their GOP counterparts’ latest anti-regulation screed.
"I understand it in the conspiracy-laden world in which we live, but I heartily reject that," Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) told Raw Story.
This fall’s upcoming elections only seem to be hardening the two parties into opposing positions new to the previously bipartisan AI space.
While many Silicon Valley firms are ringing the alarm about the end of humanity, their fears are hardly penetrating today’s Republican-controlled Senate.
“They want to preempt a predatory capture by having regulations written to their benefit and exclusion of potential competition. I'm highly skeptical,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Raw Story.
Johnson likens today’s AI fears to those raised around COVID — a global pandemic which did kill more than a million Americans — and climate change, which the vast majority of scientists say is undeniably real and an existential threat to the planet.
“There's fear-mongering. I'm not buying it,” Johnson, who’s worth tens of millions of dollars from his past life as CEO of a Wisconsin-based polyester and plastics manufacturing company, said. “I think they let them loose. True or not? I don't know, but I'm highly skeptical.”
Other multi-millionaire former businessmen in the GOP agree.
“What do you make of these AI companies saying, ‘We can't control our own’?” Raw Story asked former luxury car salesman Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH).
“Then go do something else. Then close your company down,” Moreno, whose estimated net worth tops $100 million, told Raw Story. “Think about that, in any other industry — any other industry — imagine if you're a defense contractor, before AI was in existence, and you said, ‘We make this weapon, we won't be able to control it. It could kill Americans.’ What would people say?”
Moreno supports legislation forcing disclosure of AI-created content for images, especially when it comes to deceptive deepfakes that animate realistic fictions.
“I think image is the low-hanging fruit, let's get that done,” Moreno said. “With the digital infrastructure, data centers, no more tax breaks. They have to produce their own power. No impact on the environment on a community benefit. We can do that, right?”
But, while Moreno’s open to the idea of some very targeted AI guardrails, he’s just not buying the doomsday narratives tech CEOs are selling right now.
“If you can't control your own product, then don't make your own product,” Moreno continued. “The ultimate irony with the companies is then they're saying, ‘well, we can't control our product. It's super dangerous, but we're going to go out and do an IPO and make a fortune.’”
To Moreno and many Republicans, the fear of over-regulation trumps any fears of AI armageddon.
“What we don't want is the AI industry being completely subservient to the federal government, where the federal government basically becomes like China, where they're — whatever administration is in charge — is controlling artificial intelligence and large learning models. If you imagine 1984, that would be it to me.”
To critics, many rank-and-file Republicans are borrowing scare tactics from Trump when they wave China-sized rhetorical red flags. And these new GOP prophecies predicting the end of “free” markets feel concocted to protect today’s new AI oligarchy,
“Do you still trust these companies to largely regulate themselves?” Raw Story asked the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee. “Or do you think in light of this new doomsday scenario they laid out that maybe Congress can step in?”
“There are unquestionably catastrophic risks that need to be addressed, particularly in the arena of nuclear matters or biohazards. There should be meaningful protections,” Cruz told Raw Story,
Cruz’s committee has broad jurisdiction over all things AI and the economy — yet he seems more afraid of regulations than rogue AI agents.
“But at the same time, we should not allow overzealous Washington bureaucrats to cripple American technological innovation and allow China to win the race for AI,” he added. “That would have devastating consequences for the American economy, for jobs, and it would also cede the world of AI to embody the values of the Chinese Communist Party. That would be a terrible outcome for America, a terrible outcome for the world.”
With Trump and an increasing number of Republicans arguing that most any regulatory guardrails placed on AI will set America back in today’s hypersonic AI race with China, Democrats are dumbfounded by the new protectionist rhetoric coming from Cruz and company.
“That's simply not a true statement,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) told Raw Story after voting in the Capitol.
Duckworth sits on the Cruz-controlled Commerce Committee, and the veteran also serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"Look, I think that there is potential for AI when it comes to cancer research, Alzheimer's research, but there always should be guardrails," Duckworth said. “All that I want is reasonable, common-sense guardrails on AI and how we use AI, and I think saying that any guardrails put us back against China. I feel like that's dangerous.”
While it doesn’t seem like it in the lead-up to this year’s midterm elections, the artificial intelligence debate doesn’t fall into the neat hyper-partisan boxes that most all other hot-button issues fit these increasingly tribalistic days.
Over in the House, even Democrats disagree on potential regulatory answers to this latest Silicon Valley-induced problem vexing America and weighing on the political class, but Democrats' disagreements seem to stop at regulators’ doors.
“Some of the concerns that people have around whether, you know, what the motives of the companies are, some of these are legitimate concerns, and I think we need to take them into account as we're thinking about what Congress does, right?" Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) told Raw Story.
"Some of the things that are, you know, being raised around how we make sure that whatever we do doesn't actually only benefit the big companies that are already there but still allows new entrants, that we're protecting open-weight models, like, those are all legitimate things that we need to be taking into account."
On the left, while there’s some disagreement on whether this latest wave of opposition is coming from new, Trump-tinged GOP talking points or valid concerns with big tech, the party isn’t embracing conspiracies.
Rather, members are terrified as they try to address the new digital frontier — like when OpenAI’s chatbots hacked their way out of the cyber prison developers thought they’d confined them in.
OpenAI said that two of its AI models autonomously hacked their way out of a controlled environment where they were supposed to be walled off from internet access, then broke into the systems of Hugging Face, a company that hosts open source AI models and testing resources, in order to cheat on an internal evaluation.
"Then they had kamikaze agents that would go, essentially commit suicide, to get information back to the collective, and you think OpenAI made all this s--- up as a regulatory capture scheme? Then you are just blinded by profit and partisanship," Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) told Raw Story. "These people understand that they're creating products that they've lost control of and are not safe."
Other Democrats, like Virginia Congressman Don Beyer, say these new GOP artificial intelligence conspiracies don’t mesh with the mission of safe AI tech companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and DeepMind say they were founded on.
"It's been part of their culture from the very beginning, so maybe it will have a financial impact," Beyer told Raw Story. "They all started from a premise of safety. They were all aware of risk from the very beginning. It could also have a negative financial impact on them if they actually pace the frontier or slow down."
Before Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) changed the House schedule, yet again, and sent members home until after the November election, many lawmakers received closed-door AI briefings. Those briefings left many lawmakers spooked.
Some members even reported a new, growing sense of bipartisan unity around artificial intelligence.
“While I think the American people are aware of it, it is really now bubbling to the surface finally here in Congress,” Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) told Raw Story.
What Escobar and other proponents of new AI regulations fear now is that this momentary era of bipartisan AI unity may be but a moment in time — potentially one that may have disappeared by the time the midterms are over and Congress returns to Washington.
“I do believe if we were around each other a little bit more, there would be a sense of urgency,” Escobar told Raw Story. “Some of the CEOs have, you know, some of the AI folks are in town and have been meeting with groups of us. It is really stunning that with these flashing red signals, Mike Johnson is sending everybody home.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) “angrily” lashed out Tuesday at new reporting that exposed an alleged campaign cash bribery scheme involving her office, denying the underlying allegations while also blaming the report on one of her own Senate colleagues, Punchbowl News reported.
As revealed in a bombshell report published Tuesday by ProPublica, Collins’ office was alleged by Martin Kao — a former defense contractor currently serving an 87-month sentence for money laundering and bank fraud — to have helped steer millions of tax dollars into his company, Navatek, in exchange for illegal campaign contributions funneled through a shell company. Collins’ office has fiercely denied any wrongdoing.
“This was investigated by the Biden Justice Department and the FBI,” Collins told reporters coming off the Senate floor Tuesday evening, Punchbowl News reported. “In 2021, the Biden Justice Department found there was no wrongdoing by anyone on my campaign staff, my office or me. This is absolutely outrageous. It’s clearly a political hit job.”
The Justice Department probe into the alleged scheme was shuttered after President Donald Trump retook the White House, ProPublica reported, with multiple former officials telling the outlet that the second Trump administration no longer took public corruption seriously in any meaningful fashion.
Rather than just deny the allegations, however, Collins also moved to suggest the report was the doing of one of her Senate colleagues: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
“It’s obvious if you look at ProPublica,” Collins said. “It’s obvious if you look at the tactics that Chuck Schumer always uses.”
Despite having maintained “good relationships with a number of Senate Democrats,” Politico previously noted, Collins has had an especially tense relationship with Schumer for years, with the outlet describing it as “frostier than ever” in 2021.
