Matt Laslo

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A top Republican senator suspects Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) was handed his bad intel directly by the White House before his possibly career-ending Jack Smith slam dunk.

Schmitt was massively humiliated as his gotcha moment — unveiling proof that Donald Trump's prosecutor Smith had secretly traveled to Atlanta is 2024 to collude with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to snare Trump — dramatically fell apart on the Senate floor Tuesday.

He'd claimed Smith had used an Atlanta Hawks game as cover for the meeting. It turned out, Smith had actually been at an Iowa Hawkeyes game in Maryland.

“I'm pretty sure the White House asked him to do it,” a senior Republican U.S. senator told Raw Story Wednesday, asking that their name not be used so they could speak without fear of political retribution.

“And, probably, the White House provided the material.”

Raw Story’s request for comment was not returned by Schmitt’s office.

The senator had been hyped in an Axios article Tuesday morning as a possible contender to be vice president in 2028. By Tuesday afternoon, many said the episode had blown his chances.

Republicans were still embarrassed by the Senate hearing show Wednesday.

“Of course I did, of course I did,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) whispered to Raw Story when asked if she saw it. “Of course I did.”

"There's something to be said about the staff work, and verifying before we do something like that publicly.

“I know who the Iowa Hawkeyes are."

To the Democrat who helped unravel Schmitt’s mistake in real-time during Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee hearing, the episode shows just how deeply held the beliefs of the MAGA movement are — whether true or debunked.

“It was so over the top,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) — who served eight years as a prosecutor before coming to Congress — told Raw Story. “The fact that when [Jack Smith] said he wasn't at the original Hawks games, that they just don't believe him shows how far they're taking these conspiracy theories.

“He's under oath. He's a prosecutor. He's not going to take a risk of saying, ‘Oh no, I wasn't there,’ and that they didn't believe it and then change course — you know, adjust to your moment,” Klobuchar said while riding an elevator in the U.S. Capitol Wednesday.

“You have to be very deep into that conspiracy theory to go that far.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) was hounded by reporters Tuesday after his “gotcha” moment targeting former special counsel Jack Smith fell apart in a Senate hearing — and responded by accusing Smith of being a liar.

Smith was testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about his investigations into President Donald Trump when Schmitt falsely accused Smith of meeting with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis at a basketball game in Atlanta in early 2024, sharing images of texts he argued to be proof of his claim.

Smith admitted to attending a basketball game around that time — but noted it was in Maryland, not Georgia, leaving critics to suspect Schmitt had confused the Atlanta Hawks with the Iowa Hawkeyes.

“Do you think it's possible you had your information wrong?” Schmitt was asked in the hallway after the hearing.

Schmitt, who during the hearing suggested Smith had perjured himself by denying having attended the basketball game in Atlanta, dodged the question by paraphrasing what he had asked Smith.

Reporters continued to press Schmitt, asking him if it was still his position that Smith had, in fact, attended the basketball game in Atlanta.

“There was one game that night at 7:30 that tipped off when he was in Atlanta, so I asked him if he was in Atlanta that night, and he said he wasn't,” Schmitt said.

When reminded that Smith said he had been “at a game in Maryland,” Schmitt responded, “Correct, that's what he said. I asked him if he was in Atlanta, he said he was in Maryland. He's lied before!

“The texts were related to him being at a basketball game that night. I asked him if he was in Atlanta — he said he was not in Atlanta. Jack Smith has lied before, he tried to jail the president of the United States. I have no sympathy for Jack Smith, he's a total dirtbag — quote me on it!”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — How do you fight a fictional threat? Democrats are learning on the job.

With President Donald Trump now promising to militarize his proposed 250-foot-tall arch — with tools ranging from drones to sniper nests — near Arlington Cemetery, many Democrats on Capitol Hill fear the president's plot is shaping up to be a severe public safety risk.

“Snipers who shoot people visiting their loved ones in the cemetery?” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) told Raw Story. “It made no sense whatsoever, except as perhaps a ploy to justify the arch.”

“What was your reaction when you first heard that Trump wants to militarize his arch?” Raw Story pressed former vice presidential candidate, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA).

“It was a made-up thing,” Kaine replied.

In Trump’s Washington, fiction parades about as fact, which has local leaders looking for ways to safeguard their constituents from the very commander-in-chief who swore an oath to protect the American people.

Federal lawmakers representing the D.C. region in Congress regularly coordinate security for high-profile events with Pentagon officials, Secret Service agents and undercover federal units tasked with safeguarding the National Mall.

For the past 45 years, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) has represented a cluster of suburbs that wrap around Washington, including most of Andrews Air Force Base — home to Air Force One.

Hoyer also served two separate terms as House Majority Leader stretching across three presidents — George W. Bush, Barack Obama and the end of Trump’s first term — where he was afforded a classified seat at the national security table.

That’s why Hoyer’s been rendered dumbfounded these days.

“Have you ever heard from the Pentagon that they need a militarized monument?” Raw Story asked Hoyer.

“Zero, zero. It’s absurd! He lies,” Hoyer replied without hesitation. “It is typical abuse by Trump to pretend that somehow he's doing for national security what he's doing for his ego.”

Hoyer’s far from alone.

“How many times has the Pentagon come to you saying, ‘we need snipers above D.C. and in Northern Virginia?’” Raw Story asked Kaine.

“The answer is never,” Kaine told Raw Story. “They've never suggested that and still haven't.”

“They” may not have, but the commander-in-chief is all in.

At the end of August, the Supreme Court handed Trump a big, if temporary, win when the high court’s conservative majority (5-4) ruled construction on the president’s White House ballroom could proceed.

The majority of justices allowed the work to continue, in part, because the president and his taxpayer-funded lawyers claim vital national security measures are being integrated into the new Trumpian East Wing.

Mere weeks after that ruling, Trump unveiled his new vision of an arch outfitted for war.

On social media, Trump tweeted his new plan to turn the arch “into a top-grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage.”

“He looked at the Supreme Court giving him permission to continue to build the ballroom, and thought, ‘This arch isn't going anywhere — maybe if I militarized it, the Supreme Court will let me build it,’” Congressman Don Beyer, a former U.S. ambassador, told Raw Story,

“You're in Northern Virginia, has the Pentagon ever mentioned any need for any of this?” Raw Story inquired.

“No, no,” Beyer replied. “You don't need to fly drones off the top of the arch, which is already going to be a hazard for incoming planes, and the drones make it impossible. Why would you put an armory there with Fort Myer a mile away at the Pentagon? You're just inviting people to hit it.”

Other critics agree Trump’s latest national security argument amounts to “a pretty big stretch.”

“It's also, again, very Trump to try to turn everything into a whole circus like he's doing,” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) told Raw Story. “He's completely on an island on this one.”

“The Pentagon has never asked for it. They don't need it. They don't want it. This is such a joke. He goes abroad and he gets all these ideas from his authoritarian buddies to build all this stuff and name it after him. And we all know that these are just vanity projects, and they're a waste of money.”

For now, with Democrats locked in the minority, there aren’t many options Trump’s congressional critics have besides the power of the purse — a power Subramanyam and others on the left are vowing to flex.

“I know I'm not going to support any of it,” Subramanyam told Raw Story. “I'm not going to support any funding for it.”

WASHINGTON — The Republican candidate to be Alabama’s next governor admitted Thursday he actively avoids reading anything — because only his opinion matters to him.

"No, I read very little," Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) told Raw Story. "I want my own opinion, not somebody else's."

The former Auburn football coach is leading polls in his gubernatorial contest in ruby-red Alabama, but former U.S. Senator Doug Jones (D-AL) is hoping to ride the nation’s anti-Donald Trump sentiment into the governor’s mansion in November.

In today’s Senate, Tuberville’s far from alone in avoiding the latest headlines. Unlike the president's tweet-saturated first term, these days most Republicans in Congress seem to avoid the news altogether.

But Tuberville is taking it to a new level.

"What do you make of this report that Vice President Vance was the person behind the leak in one of the Politico stories that got them banned from the White House?" Raw Story pressed the MAGA Republican while riding an elevator in the Capitol.

"Did they ban Politico, too?" Tuberville asked Raw Story. "Who knows? I mean, hey, I've learned up here about 10 percent of it is fact. The other [90 percent] is not even close to reality. You know that. Everybody tries to get out there and make a name."

"There's no way Vance would do that," Tuberville said. "You gotta have faith in your people that lead, you know, on both sides."

"And he'd lose faith with Trump if he was leaking?" Raw Story pressed.

"Well, whoever's going to run for president is going to be picked by him," Tuberville said of Trump's role in picking his successor.

With Vance and Secretary of State Rubio's names at the top of the speculative 2028 presidential pack, Tuberville says both need to woo Trump.

"Well, you can't have both of them run,” Tuberville gamed out. “You can't waste that much money."

While he won’t be found thumbing through tabloids, Tuberville says he’s heard chatter in Washington about some of the other Republicans who are eyeing a White House run in 2028.

“I saw that Rand [Paul] is thinking about running,” Tuberville said. “Rand Paul — who else? Cruz will run. I was with [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis Saturday at a football game in Tuscaloosa. He said he hasn't made his mind up yet.”

Besides presidential gossip, Tuberville seems to have tuned out the talk of the town on Capitol Hill.

"What do you make of Sen. [John] Curtis' (R-UT) move to try to get [Donald] Trump Jr. in to testify about the Russian wedding donations?" Raw Story asked.

"I didn't see that," Tuberville said.

"Oh, yeah? He's calling your party out. Some people aren't happy," Raw Story replied. "Do you have questions about Trump Jr. taking Russian oligarch money?"

"I don't get into all that," Tuberville said. “I mean, no reason to talk about anything you don't know anything about.”

A central Bible verse left Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville puzzled Wednesday — as he compared himself to America’s poorest people.

Tuberville, a member of the conservative Churches of Christ denomination who frequently espouses his beliefs, including posting on his Facebook page, “As a man of Christian Faith, it’s horrifying to witness this decline of morals in America,” was tripped up by the words of Jesus.

“Punishing what?” the Republican uttered at the reference as a Raw Story reporter confronted him over the GOP’s move to throw 750,000 people off Obamacare.

“Some of the people say your party’s, you know, punishing ‘the least of these,’” he was told.

“Punishing what? ‘The least of these?’”

“‘The least of these’ — biblical reference,” the reporter explained, referring to the famous verse in Matthew 25:40, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Jesus speaks the words, teaching that acts of kindness toward the poor, sick or hungry are acts done for Jesus himself.

“The least of these?” Tuberville asked again, clearly puzzled.

But he soldiered on.

“Well, we’re all getting punished,” he said. “We’re all in the same boat.”

Congress members choose a top-tier health care plan and have about 75 percent of the cost covered by taxpayers.

A rank-and-file member of the House also receives a salary of $174,000-a-year.

Tuberville's home state, meanwhile, is the eighth poorest in the nation, with more than 16 percent of its population living under the federal poverty level.

On Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz announced that roughly 750,000 people have had their ACA coverage canceled, citing fraud.

Vance said those enrollments include people unaware they were enrolled, people with employer-provided coverage, or those earning above 400% of the federal poverty level. He estimated the move will save taxpayers $2.2 billion.

Another 419,000 marketplace enrollees face additional verification. The administration also suspended new agents or brokers for six months.

Officials did not provide details about who lost coverage or how they were informed, and health policy experts question the administration's claims about the scale of fraud.

“Yeah. I mean, good job,” said Tuberville.

“This is the first group that ever tried to clean it up. We're losing hundreds of millions of dollars a day to fraud. We can't afford it.”

WASHINGTON — Embattled Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins isn’t happy that Vice President JD Vance announced the Trump administration is booting close to 760,000 Americans off Obamacare exchanges about 40 days before this fall’s midterm elections.

“Are you annoyed with the administration for taking 750,000 people off Obamacare right ahead of the election?” Raw Story asked Senator Collins (R-ME).

“That seems like an overreach to me,” Collins told Raw Story as a flock of congressional reporters listened in at the U.S. Capitol.

What may be worse for Collins and other GOP incumbents on the ballot this November is that some of their Republican colleagues are calling for even more Americans to lose the health insurance they were provided under the Obama-era Affordable Care Act [ACA].

Vice President Vance, who’s charged with leading an anti-fraud task force, claims the roughly 760,000 names being removed from Obamacare rolls are fraudsters — a sentiment echoed by the MAGA wing of the GOP on Capitol Hill.

“Because of the enhanced [ACA] subsidies, there are estimates there were six million completely fraudulent that are signed up — either didn't exist or certainly were unaware of it,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Raw Story. “So 750,000 is probably just a good start.”

“You'd like to see more?” Raw Story pressed the chair of the Senate Budget Committee.

“I don't want anybody helping mortgage our children's future that aren't eligible for these benefits,” Johnson continued. “I wouldn't think any American would want to see that.”

Johnson’s eager to work alongside Vance’s anti-fraud task force if the GOP’s able to maintain control of the Senate in the New Year.

“I certainly want to be working with the vice president’s task force and see what they're coming up with,” Johnson said. “You're just scratching the surface in terms of uncovering, you know, massive fraud because we make it easy for fraudsters to fleece the American taxpayer and government.”

While more moderate Republicans running in the last purple-ish states remaining are distancing themselves from Vance’s effort, Republicans running for higher office in red states are pressuring Vance to find even more than his initial 750,000 to remove from federal health exchanges.

“Do you think J.D. Vance did a good job?” Raw Story asked Alabama gubernatorial candidate Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).

“Yeah. I mean, good job; this is the first group that ever tried to clean it up,” Tuberville told Raw Story. “We're losing hundreds of millions of dollars a day to fraud. We can't afford it.”

“Some people say your party's, you know, punishing the ‘least of these?’” Raw Story pressed.

“Punishing what?” Tuberville asked.

“‘The the least of these’ — biblical reference,” Raw Story explained of the Bible verse Matthew 25:40 (“'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me'”).

“The least of these?” Tuberville asked again.

“The least of these — the poor people — that they're getting punished,” Raw Story explained.

“Well, we're all getting punished,” Tuberville replied. “We're all in the same boat.”

Democrats wept.

"If the idea is to clean up the rolls, there's a way to do this," Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) told Raw Story. "This is about punishing poor people."

To Schatz — who’s rumored to be a potential replacement as Democratic leader once current Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) retires — this is just the latest episode in the GOP’s sustained attack on so-called Obamacare.

"This is what they wanted to do all along," Schatz said. "It's going to raise prices, and it's a hell of a closing message."

While it may bolster their party’s affordability argument ahead of the election, Democrats are demanding receipts.

“I want to know more,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) — Senate Democrat’s number two in command — told Raw Story. “They say it's “fraud” — I want to establish that fact.”

“Because there's just no trust?” Raw Story pressed the retiring Democratic leader.

“No trust,” Durbin replied. “They’ve been trying to do in Obamacare for more than a decade. Now they're just going to let people off the rolls. Let's see the proof.”

It’s not just Democrats.

Some Republican incumbents, like Susan Collins, who’s fighting for her political life up in Maine, say they aren’t buying the White House’s latest fraud claim just yet.

“I don't know what the basis is,” Collins told Raw Story while boarding one of the Capitol’s underground trams. “But it strikes me as problematic.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ronald Reagan’s vision of America as a “shining city upon a hill” is being torn apart as President Donald Trump attacks America’s free press — while giving a communist leader the red carpet treatment, critics warned.

“It's just such a hot mess of chaos and corruption,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) told Raw Story Tuesday — the same day Department of Justice lawyers argued allowing CNN, MS NOW and Politico to cover Trump’s White House poses a national security risk.

Earlier in the day, Trump threatened to “annihilate” Iran in his address to the UN General Assembly — after telling CNN's Kaitlan Collins “you shouldn’t be here” as she covered the gathering of world leaders.

“It's devastating, really, to think he's standing up there at the UN — first off, he's saying, ‘oh, I might obliterate a country,’ which would be a war crime,’” Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) told Raw Story.

“And then, you know, for the whole world there he is on display saying, ‘I'd like to shut down any voice that is in opposition to me.’ I mean, he might as well be a dictator in charge of North Korea or, you know, some other country. It's just obscene.”

Trump’s high-profile week on the international stage is far from over. Trump’s critics were bracing for more embarrassment Wednesday as the president was scheduled to begin hosting Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Trump’s expected to greet Xi at Andrews Air Force Base Wednesday, ahead of a formal White House welcoming ceremony complete with a military flyover Thursday, and capped off with a formal state dinner later that evening.

All the pomp and circumstance won’t be enough to mask Trump’s ongoing effort to permanently ban the three critical news outlets from covering his White House.

Instead of America’s First Amendment being on display this week, critics say Trump’s worst instincts are being projected for all to see.

“Nothing is more important than the First Amendment because that ensures that everybody's voice is counted. I think, what's going on now is just horrifying,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), whose father, Peter, was an award-winning journalist, told Raw Story. “The signal that we're walking back from freedom, that's what it means to me.”

That has many political watchers on the left nervous.

“It's right out of Xi's playbook, right? I mean, if the media is not nice to you, if they're not giving you positive coverage, then ban them, try to undermine them, right?” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) told Raw Story. “Next he's going to try to arrest them or investigate them, right? So this guy will do anything it takes to consolidate power.”

The optics aren’t lost on former U.S. ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA).

“Ironic that it's at the same time that he's talking to XI. There's no free press in China, why have it here?” Beyer told Raw Story. “It was another very sad step on the road to destroying our democracy. This is what autocrats and dictators do. First is they ban the press. They don't want to hear bad news. They don't want bad news getting out.”

With many national news outlets banding together and boycotting live pooled coverage of Trump, the White House has rolled out Trump TV to stream the president’s events, which also has critics on edge.

“The access that’s being denied should concern every single person, because it's going to continue to grow; he's now launching, basically, state-run TV,” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, told Raw Story. “He wants to be an authoritarian. We see it more every single day.”

While Trump wants to come across as strong and in control, Democrats say his attacks on the free press actually makes him look petty and insecure.

“I talked to Lindell News today,” Beyer said through a mocking laugh as he discussed the fringe, conspiracy-peddling outlet.

Beyer says Trump needs to grow up.

“A lot of other presidents, Democrat and Republican, have had stories they didn't like,” Beyer said. “You know, Obama didn't like Fox. And I'm sure Lyndon Johnson didn't like all kinds of people, but they never threw them out.”

With November’s midterm elections just around the corner, Democrats say Trump is making their case for them — though they really wish he’d stop and get back to showcasing American excellence and press freedoms on the international stage.

“I don't know, like, if I were a Republican voter in Kansas or Alaska or Ohio, and I'd be looking at this and, you know — you're throwing this multi-million dollar gala for a communist, for the leader of the Communist People's Party at the same time that you're denying the free press in this country?” Minnesota Senator Smith told Raw Story. “It's crazy.”

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.”

WASHINGTON — Will President Donald Trump be more empowered now that Speaker Mike Johnson gaveled the U.S. House of Representatives out of session until after November’s elections? Not necessarily, according to congressional Democrats who are bracing for what they expect to be the most corrupt election of their lifetimes.

“Do you worry, with the House out of session, that Trump might feel emboldened?” Raw Story asked Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM).

“That man wakes up every day emboldened,” she said while walking across the U.S. Capitol grounds. “I don't think he cares about the Constitution or the law, regardless of whether people are here or not.”

While more than 100 House Democrats called on the speaker to cancel Congress’ scheduled October recess so members could focus on drawing up an oversight plan for artificial intelligence, Johnson instead added more time off — scrapping the last two scheduled legislative work weeks at the end of September before pulling the plug altogether Wednesday, after a mere three-day work week.

The move effectively leaves Trump free of a legislative branch that could reign him in — though it could, in theory, be called back to D.C. in an emergency.

But, with the Republican Party in charge, few checks had been put on the president throughout his second Trump.

Trump has all but spray-painted Washington gold, slapping his own name on the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts after demolishing the historic East Wing of the White House over the protests of the White House Historical Association that Jackie Kennedy established in 1961.

Outrage over the deployment of ICE and the National Guard, as well as other controversial policy moves, has also resulted in little action from Congress.

Most Democrats have grown to expect the worst from Trump as their party remains locked in the minority in both the Senate and the House.

“Is there anything Democrats could do more if Congress stayed in session?” Raw Story asked the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. “Could you be more of a check on Trump?”

“We've had the same tools we've had for the last two years, right? They're pretty weak,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) told Raw Story.

While they’ve amassed and trained an army of lawyers nationwide ahead of November, Democratic Party leaders agree their hands are largely tied while in the nation’s capital.

“With Congress gone, do you feel like Trump might feel a little emboldened?” Raw Story asked Vice Chair of the Democratic Caucus Ted Lieu (D-CA).

“No,” Lieu said without hesitation. “Speaker Johnson's not going to lift a finger. He's going to just continue to do whatever the White House says. So it's not like we're going to pass any laws.”

“Do you think it could actually be better to have your candidates closer to local officials?” Raw Story pressed. “So that they can coordinate on potential local election interference?”

“That would be helpful. That's a good point,” Lieu said. “Look, he's gonna try. He's essentially failed. So I also know there were a lot of elections last year and even this year where Democrats won and no one yelled and screamed that somehow it was rigged, because they weren't.”

Whether naive or not, Democrats are feeling emboldened after this week’s Supreme Court ruling blocking Trump’s attempt to have the U.S. Postal Service be the arbiter of which Americans can and can’t vote by mail.

“The American people have had it with Trump's false attacks on our democracy and our voting,” Lieu said. “Judges who have been appointed by Trump himself have written very strong opinions slapping down the president.”

“It’s always, especially with Donald Trump, it's always good to expect what no one else would ever have done before,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) told Raw Story. “But, yeah, physically, Congress' absence for the whole month of October doesn't really matter.”

Then the former ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein caught himself.

“Well, it probably matters to getting things done,” Beyer said. “Everyone's still going to be working, so our ability to file lawsuits and join in lawsuits [remains].”

While congressional Republicans roll over for most all of Trump’s whims and power grabs these days, for the time being, Democrats remain resigned to the new Trumpian ways of Washington.

That’s a trend they’re set on ending on Election Day, which Democrats acknowledge can only happen if they win this fall.

That’s why most say the party’s get-out-the-vote effort is the strongest antidote they have to any Trump-orchestrated election interference schemes that may be ahead.

“At the end of the day, election integrity is going to be about people voting,” New Mexico Congresswoman Stansbury said. “You know, massive numbers of poll watchers and volunteers who are going to make sure that polling stations are fair and free and open and basically using the tools of the law to stop Trump if anything bad happens.”

Before winning a special election in 2021, Stansbury was a staffer at the White House Office of Management and Budget under former President Barack Obama.

She now serves on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, where she’s had a front-row seat to study Trump.

“He's a bigger danger when he's unsupervised by his own staff,” Stansbury told Raw Story, “because that's when he goes on social media just like any sad, lonely person.”

WASHINGTON — An embattled GOP congressman says he’s eager to brawl on Pete Hegseth’s behalf in the wake of his fellow Republican, Rep Thomas Massie (KY) dropping impeachment articles against the embattled defense secretary this week.

“I will f------ punch someone in the face for talking about Hegseth,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) told Raw Story just outside the U.S. Capitol.

On Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson sent the House of Representatives home early ahead of November’s elections, which critics say was to avoid an impeachment vote that would have twisted many vulnerable MAGA-aligned incumbents in knots.

But Van Orden says he’s ready for a public Hegseth debate.

“If these morons are talking s--- about Pete, you know, they're barking up the wrong tree,” the former Navy SEAL said.

In the surprise impeachment resolution Massie dropped earlier this week, the Kentucky Republican begs to differ with his fellow party members.

Massie accuses Hegseth of “murder” for the Pentagon’s extrajudicial killings of alleged drug dealers in the Caribbean, while also contending American special forces were ordered to unlawfully invade Venezuela and kidnap “a sovereign foreign leader,” President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

The seven-term libertarian — who lost his primary to a Trump-backed opponent earlier this year — also accuses Hegseth of conducting an “illegal war in Iran," an allegation Van Orden dismisses out of hand.

“Operation Midnight Hammer, absolute resolve. The greatest special operations mission in the history of special operations,” Van Orden said of the Pentagon’s 2025 strike on three Iranian nuclear facilities. “And they prevented Iran from having a nuclear weapon by pulling off the most amazing air raid in the history of air raids.”

After that June 2025 operation, Hegseth and Trump claimed the operation “completely obliterated" Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Then, in February 2026, the duo told the world that America joined Israel in preemptive strikes against Iran to ensure the Middle Eastern nation could never attain a nuclear weapon.

While critics say Trump and Hegseth’s dueling claims negate each other, Van Orden is singing the administration’s talking points.

“So it's incredible,” Van Orden said. “The amount of effort that Pete Hegseth has put into this job is absolutely, it's insane how good it is.”

“Thomas Massie has lost the bubble,” Van Orden added, while starting his Harley-Davidson just off the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

“Thomas Massie has done more damage to the Republican Party than any Democrat in Congress.”

House lawmakers would have been forced to vote on Massie’s resolution to impeach Hegseth Thursday, but after Johnson's surprise shutdown of the House Wednesday, they now won't vote until after the midterm elections.

“Some folks are saying [the cancellation] is because of Massie’s impeachment against Hegseth?” Raw Story pressed.

“I have no idea,” Van Orden said.

“But wouldn't a lot of you, like, want to stand up for Hegseth?” Raw Story asked Van Orden.

“I have no idea,” Van Orden said.

“He has changed the culture of the Department of War to focus on war,” Van Orden told Raw Story. “Anybody that's talking s*** about him doesn't know what they're talking about.”

WASHINGTON — Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) hid his effort to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from his fellow Republicans until he unveiled it on the House floor Tuesday, fearing Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) would gavel the House out of session to avoid taking up the measure.

“Frankly, I was concerned that Mike Johnson would end Congress again — like, shorten even our already truncated work period — if he found out I was doing this, so I shared the idea with nobody,” Massie told reporters on the Capitol steps.

“You can't normalize kidnapping foreign heads of state. You can't normalize taking over countries to take their oil. You can't normalize bombing fishing boats. You know, these are extrajudicial killings,” Massie told Raw Story shortly after introducing his effort to impeach the Secretary of Defense. “It's murder."

“You can't normalize murder, and so they've, in many of these cases, they've built a very shaky, convoluted legal scaffolding that they say protects them. And what I'm doing here is saying, ‘no, it does not,’” Massie continued.

Massie blames Hegseth and Trump’s White House for stretching the bounds of the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which mandates that presidents come to Congress for permission to wage foreign wars if conflicts last more than 60 days. He said he'd been planning the impeachment move for two-to-three months.

By claiming an end to the Iran war ahead of the 60-day deadline, only to then ramp up bombing campaigns later, Massie says the administration is setting a dangerous precedent that cuts Congress out of the very War Powers Resolution Congress passed.

“They acknowledge it exists, and they have to comply with parts of it. Then they also acknowledge that the timeline requirements are real: a 60-day timeline. But they've invented this new legal framework where they say, well, we'll end every conflict at 59 days and then restart it,” Massie said.

This summer, the Senate and House both passed war powers resolutions to block the president from engaging in war with Iran, yet the administration has rebuffed the bipartisan will of Congress.

“They are saying that the part about the concurrent resolution where if you have the House and the Senate pass a concurrent resolution, that that's not constitutional, and so that they don't have to follow it,” Massie complained.

“Well, they're citing an immigration ruling by the Supreme Court that doesn't even mention the 1973 War Powers Resolution. All of that needs to get litigated. There's a law on the books that they are violating in several ways. And that's part of what this is about.”

Now that the cat’s out of the bag, Massie says he plans to start rallying his fellow Republicans to get behind the effort.

“So I'll go talk to them now and see what kind of support we can get,” Massie said. “But, you know, doing this wasn't predicated on whether it could succeed or not. There needs to be a marker in history.

“They have exceeded all norms for rules of engagement, for how you use or misuse our military to take oil from another country, to kidnap a foreign leader. Like, somebody needs to put a marker in history, and that's what this is.”

While Massie’s hoping to attract GOP support, he says he’s not holding his breath.

“I expect most of my Republican colleagues will vote against it,” Massie said. “They're afraid of the White House too much.”

WASHINGTON — After taking their annual monthlong August break, members of the U.S. House of Representatives worked three and a half days this week.

That was enough for Speaker Mike Johnson. Once the House passed a measure funding the government through December, he decided to give Congress an extra two weeks off, canceling the last two weeks of September. After that, the chamber won't reconvene until mid-November.

“It's a pretty stunning self-indictment of their lack of performance," recently retired Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) told Raw Story. "When the speaker thinks that they are better off not working than actually legislating, in a way that works against their political interests, which would be the effect.

“That's amazing.”

After their brief Washington work week, the House was immediately gaveled out of session for the next 10 days, joining their Senate colleagues in taking all of Labor Day week off. It came days after a year-old President Donald Trump message moaning that regular Americans get too many holidays recirculated.

No sitting Republican responded to Raw Story's requests for comment. And that’s not a coincidence, according to that former Michigan congressman.

“When not showing up for work is better than showing up for work, you got a problem,” Kildee added.

To other Democrats, the timing is beyond fishy, especially after Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) dropped their Epstein Files Transparency Act II at the start of August, when the House was in recess.

Last year, the bipartisan duo of Massie and Khanna already bested Johnson and Trump when they garnered the necessary 218 signatures on a discharge petition that enabled them and the Jeffrey Epstein survivors to bypass opponents and pass the law.

That first Epstein Files Transparency Act forced the Justice Department to release some 3 million files publicly.

In a sense, that first measure was aimed at empowering survivors, but while they were seen and some felt heard for the first time, no one was prosecuted.

This second Epstein transparency act creates a private right of action for victims and prosecutors alike “to challenge and sue the U.S. Attorney General for unlawfully withholding, redacting, delaying, concealing, removing, or failing to publish Epstein-related records,” the pair said.

"It will be a very tangible impact on the perpetrators," Massie told Raw Story at the Capitol earlier this week.

"We don't need to release any more names," Massie continued. "What we need is for the names that have been released to be prosecuted, and I'm sure there will be more names that show up."

This powerful new anti-Epstein act picked up steam as members returned from their August recess earlier this week and were finally able to sign onto the measure, which is why critics like Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) are now accusing the speaker of stonewalling survivors once again.

“I think he’s afraid of discharge petitions, of continuing war in Iran, the million other examples of f------ up by the administration,” Escobar texted Raw Story. “And he is afraid of his own conference and doesn’t want anyone to have to answer to what Trump is doing.”

Even with Congress out, Washington remains divided along party lines so, naturally, some Republicans are coming to Johnson’s defense. Just not publicly.

“Guessing it’s because of the election,” a Republican lawmaker who asked for anonymity texted Raw Story when asked about the impromptu shutdown. “Members wanting to campaign back home. My guess is.”

President Donald Trump got a stern warning from members of his own party as he was lambasted for shrugging off an issue fast snowballing into a major crisis.

Trump’s refusal to admit Americans are hurting economically — in fact, calling affordability worries a “hoax” and claiming they’d been fixed — is going to clatter him, key Republicans warned as they returned from meeting with constituents.

“I think he knows different,” vice chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus Rep. Ralph Norman told Raw Story when asked if Trump really believes there’s no problem.

And, when confronted with concerns that the White House is ignoring the issue, he said, "Well, I think they're going to find out if they do. They shouldn't do that."

Norman spoke to Raw Story after weeks of meeting with constituents in his South Carolina district.

Near the top of concerns he heard about was the construction of massive data centers to fuel AI — another issue that Trump has publicly dismissed, claiming that the only communities opposing them choose to be "backwards and poor."

But towering above that was the cost of living issue.

Back in February, Trump announced that affordability was a problem of President Joe Biden’s administration, and that he was fixing it.

“They would say affordability, everybody would say, ‘Oh, Trump caused–,’ no, they cause the affordability problem,” he said. “And we’ve solved it. And we’re going still lower, but we’ve solved it.”

Half a year later, long-term interest rates are higher than they’ve been since President George W. Bush’s administration, a six-month war with Iran is sending prices rocketing and Trump’s economic approval rating has been at historic lows for several weeks.

Arkansas Republican Rep. Bruce Westerman echoed Norman.

"It always comes up,” he told Raw Story about the prominence of cost of living worries as he speaks to constituents.

“You know, people drive by gas stations every day and they see the price at the pump and they, you know, much like in the Biden administration, they feel it at the grocery store and everything they buy.

“So they are looking for relief.

"I don't think the affordability problem is all the way solved yet. I think that a lot of the policies we put in place had things heading in the right direction — until we saw the war in Iran, which affected oil, which affects everything."

And Lauren Boebert (R-CO), usually a staunch supporter of Trump’s policies, said ranchers in her district are mad at the president.

“I'm worried about my farmers and ranchers,” she said.

“Like, seriously, my ranchers are like, p—ed over this beef stuff, and, you know, I want to get a farm bill passed. I want to get WRDA passed. I want us to get authorizing bills. Like we're like, that's the stuff I'm worried about.”

She did, however, voice reluctance to blame Trump.

“Affordability. But you can't just throw out that word,” she told Raw Story.

“I mean, Democrats made things unaffordable under Joe Biden. I mean, inflation was sky high and they did nothing to solve it, and now all of a sudden they want to pretend like they have the answers.”

She added, “I think that there are steps that we're doing to work on it. I mean, the Venezuela oil deal — love it! There's some things we're doing amazingly, some things we certainly can do better on.”

MAGA Rep. Nancy Mace hurled an expletive Tuesday as she learned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bragged on live TV that he manipulated Donald Trump into attacking Iran.

Viewers were left gasping as Netanyahu revealed he ran an "influence" campaign he claimed helped drag America into the widely unpopular war — that has now been going on for six months, has killed an estimated 18 Americans and left Trump's popularity ratings plummeting.

Mace was told about the claims as she walked what looked like a Havanese she called Millie into the Capitol Friday.

"If it's true, it's kind of f----ed up," said the South Carolina Republican, who is leaving Congress in January after stepping down to unsuccessfully run for governor. She added that she hadn't seen the video of the Israeli leader speaking.

Another MAGA-ally in Congress, Anna Paulina Luna (FL), also said she hadn't seen the video, but commented, " I will say, no-one can manipulate Trump."

Facing grim poll numbers ahead of October elections, Netanyahu sat down with Israeli network Channel 14 Sunday to make his case to voters. Speaking in Hebrew, he described decades of opposition to Iran and claimed it eventually paid off.

“I’ve been against Iran for almost 40 years… it took a long time to bring the United States to its senses,” Netanyahu said in Hebrew, according to Zeteo’s Prem Thakker.

“[I’ve had] close to 1,000 hours on American television with the ability to influence the United States — with the intimate knowledge of all its leaders, both those who support us and those who don’t support us — the ability to navigate this field, through it.”

“The gall," wrote Thakker. "In English, Netanyahu lavishes praise on U.S. leaders. In Hebrew, he boasts of how he manipulated them.”

And journalist Max Blumenthal wrote, “Netanyahu explicitly cites how the U.S. media has served as a compliant springboard, a vessel for his influence operation on, if not the populace, at least the consultants and members of Congress who engage with cable news more than their actual constituents.”

Bloomberg reported in March that a White House insider revealed Trump’s decision to launch a war against Iran was “partly motivated by pressure from outside allies” — chief among them being Netanyahu.

Speculation that Netanyahu had “pulled” Trump into the deeply unpopular conflict was so strong that Trump felt compelled to respond: “Israel never talked me into the war with Iran,” he wrote in a social media post in late April.

Mace, who already owns a Havanese called Liberty and who insiders say recently adopted Millie, stopped to talk to a protester outside the Capitol who was holding a sign that read: "$40,000,000,000,000 Rick4Dictator.com" and told Raw Story he was planning a presidential run.

"I needed an animal in my life," she told him. "Another one."

WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump and his administration turned their focus to “election security” in recent months, alumni of the Select Jan. 6, 2021 Committee have been left scratching their heads, wondering if anyone around the president has even a cursory understanding of the American Constitution.

"It's really not a security push. It's a voter suppression effort, and I think it's going to fail," Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) — a lawyer by trade — told Raw Story. “All of the Constitution puts the running of elections in the states.”

Lofgren was one of the seven Democratic members of the Jan. 6 Committee, which was chaired by House Homeland Security Committee Ranking Member Bennie Thompson (D-MS).

In exclusive interviews with Raw Story, Thompson, Lofgren and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) laid out their fears and game plan to stop the Trump administration from interfering with this year’s heated midterm elections.

“His comment was over the top”

Thompson isn’t surprised by much these days, but he was shocked last month when Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened to withhold federal funds from states that don’t give the feds their voter rolls — not to mention him threatening local poll workers with jail time.

In July 2026, Mullin said the DHS had preliminarily determined there were more than 250,000 noncitizens on voter rolls in California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, and demanded states run their voter rolls through a federal database to check for noncitizens. States that refuse would lose access to federal grants, he said.

“His comment was over the top,” Thompson told Raw Story. “I don't know what authority the Secretary of Homeland Security would have to go after any election officials. You know, that's another branch of government.”

While he sees it as an assault on the constitutional balance meant to restrain the federal government, Thompson says Mullin’s just trying to appease and please Trump.

“It's just a dog whistle for the president to try to convince the president that, ‘I'll do anything you want me to do, just leave me as secretary, including telling things that are not true,’” Thompson said.

“Here we have ICE out of control, here we have disasters occurring, and you're talking about an election that’s some 100 days away?”

The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Raskin, is a former constitutional law professor. He says the Trump administration needs a refresher course.

“Look, the president of the United States and his Cabinet have nothing to do with the administration of elections,” Raskin told Raw Story on the Capitol steps. “They should go and actually do their jobs, which means taking care that the laws passed by Congress are faithfully executed. And we haven't passed any laws telling them to get involved in elections. The states are doing a fine job.”

“Weaponizing the powers of the government against the citizens”

While Trump and his Cabinet have recently dusted off age-old allegations of Chinese cyber intrusions into American elections, Thompson says this White House has failed to make its case.

“The real challenge is, is this a problem? You've not defined what the problem is,” Thompson said. “And so here you are looking for a solution to a problem that's not defined.”

“Are you worried, with Mullin involved, that they might be beating the drum and preparing to put ICE agents at the polls?” Raw Story asked.

“I have no doubt, unless states and localities push back, what that attempt would be, but that attempt would only be in Democratic performing districts,” Thompson said. “So you are weaponizing the powers of the government against the citizens to express an opinion in support of the candidate of their choice.”

“If people go to the polls and see people in uniform and all that kind of thing, it's a deterrent,” Thompson said. “And, as the greatest democracy in the world, we should be encouraging people to come, not somehow intimidating them, and I think that's part of their message.”

To Raskin, the groundswell of energy from the party’s grassroots is the biggest deterrent Democrats have to heavy-handed election meddling from Washington officials.

“So the people who are really involved in it, who are administering elections, know things are in good shape and everything else is just political posturing and intimidation against the election workers,” Raskin said. “And we saw what they did back in 2020, but we're not going to allow them to try to steal this election.”

"Spending a lot more of our time out on the road campaigning”

If Democrats do recapture one or both chambers in November, Raskin will be elevated to chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and after two historic Trump impeachments in his first administration, that committee’s expected to be ground zero for some of the fiercest fights in the new year.

Still, Raskin says it’s premature to be laying out an agenda for the committee should Democrats win back the House.

“Oh, geez, my favorite question. The reason I can't tell you that — I can tell you 100 things, but I can't tell you [that because] I haven't vetted that with my committee,” Raskin said. “And, you know, we operate together. And of course, what we do, then we also act in conjunction with the rest of the caucus and with the leadership.”

Raskin’s braced, if eager, to investigate any election interference from the Trump administration.

While he says elected Democrats are internally discussing which direction to focus their oversight efforts on should they win this fall, with Congress out until September, Raskin has a busy August ahead as he traverses the nation stumping for Democrats coast to coast.

“We are, you know, actively discussing all of those things, although we're spending a lot more of our time out on the road campaigning,” Raskin said as the House started its extended summer break. “And I'm headed to Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Colorado and New Mexico, and we're going to go fight for Democratic victory everywhere.”