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'Put a Real Ban on the Floor If You’re Serious': Senate Democrats Block Loophole-Laden Fake Fix to End Lawmaker Stock Trading
"This measure was a ruse, promoted by House Speaker Mike Johnson, to make it appear that congressional Republicans were tackling an ethical quagmire when, in fact, it would have accomplished very little."
Sep 30, 2026
Democrats in the Senate have blocked what they described as a loophole-laden Republican-led bill to ban members of Congress from purchasing stocks.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) blasted his Democratic colleagues on Wednesday after they declined to give the votes necessary to advance the bill—known as the Stop Insider Trading Act—past the Senate filibuster.
"The Democrats who blocked it went back on their word to protect their own wallets—they should be ashamed of themselves," Cotton said.
But Democrats described the bill, which passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in July, as a sham. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said the bill "does not adequately ban congressional stock trading," and described it as "meaningless messaging."
While the bill would have prohibited members of Congress, their spouses, and dependent children from buying stocks, it would not have required them to divest the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock they already own.
It also would have exempted President Donald Trump and other executive branch employees. During his second term in office, Trump has made around 30,000 securities trades since returning to office. Bloomberg estimated, based on public disclosures, that he'd made more than 21,000 trades worth between $600 million and $1.86 billion in 2025 alone.
The bill passed by House Republicans also attached a national photo ID requirement for voting as well as additional identification requirements for vote-by-mail, which voting rights advocates argued could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters who do not possess a valid photo ID.
"This measure was a ruse, promoted by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), to make it appear that congressional Republicans were tackling an ethical quagmire when, in fact, it would have accomplished very little," said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen.
Democrats have argued that the watered-down Republican proposal was meant to sap momentum from stronger bills, amid broad public demand for a stock trading ban.
Holman noted that "there was serious legislation to stop congressional insider trading, but Johnson would not bring up any of the serious proposals for a floor vote."
A bipartisan bill that has stalled in the House would have required members of Congress to divest stock they currently own. Meanwhile, the GOP-controlled House Rules Committee blocked a Democratic proposal that would have made the president and vice president subject to the ban.
"Let’s be clear: I support a total ban on Congress members trading stock," said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) on Wednesday. "But Republicans are trying to package a fraudulent version of that with a bill to disenfranchise American voters."
"This is politics at its worst," he said. "Put a real ban on the floor if you’re serious."
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Citing 'Civilizational Extinction Risk,' Khanna to Intro Bill to Ban Recursive AI
"The tech lords use jargon to confuse. They count on the tech illiteracy of the elected class. They hope we won’t look under the hood," said US Rep. Ro Khanna.
Sep 29, 2026
US Rep. Ro Khanna announced plans on Monday to introduce what he described as "the most comprehensive... legislation to date" regulating the artificial intelligence industry.
In an interview with CNBC, Khanna (D-Calif.) said that he wanted to enact at least a temporary ban on recursive AI that is capable of improving itself and modifying its objectives without human input.
Such a ban would be in effect until the federal government had created proper guardrails on the technology, CNBC reported.
“There’s actually a civilizational extinction risk,” Khanna told CNBC, referring to the dangers of recursive AI. "There's a safety risk of loss of control, and then there’s a misuse risk, and we need to take both seriously."
Khanna's bill would also create a new federal agency tasked with crafting and enforcing safety measures on AI models, with independent auditors embedded in every frontier lab that would report directly to the agency.
The legislation wouldn't just create regulations for the AI industry, but also criminal penalties for AI developers who "disable safeguards, kill switches, logging or containment systems, or who knowingly deploy an unauthorized system," CNBC reported.
Promoting the coming bill in a Tuesday social media post, Khanna argued that Big Tech could not be trusted to regulate itself.
"The tech lords use jargon to confuse," Khanna wrote. "They count on the tech illiteracy of the elected class. They hope we won’t look under the hood. They know they can’t gaslight me."
While multiple polls have shown that putting guardrails on the AI industry is politically popular, Republican Party leaders have said that no regulations for the industry are coming so long as they control the White House and the US Congress.
In a Tuesday interview with CNBC, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he hoped that any guardrails put on AI are "voluntary" on the part of Big Tech companies.
Two weeks ago, Johnson said in an interview on CNN that federal regulations of the industry made little sense because "Congress is obviously less qualified than the people who are pushing this frontier to know the ins and outs of it."
President Donald Trump on Tuesday expressed a similar sentiment, telling reporters outside the White House that Big Tech could be trusted to be responsible with the powerful technology it is creating.
"They're outstanding people," Trump said of the tech executives. "They don't want anything to go wrong. I mean, their companies are at stake, if something goes wrong, their companies are at stake. They're not going to let that happen. This is going to be all for the good... they're really going to be policing each other."
Trump on big tech: "They don't want anything to go wrong. Their companies are at stake. They're not gonna let that happen. They're really gonna be policing each other." pic.twitter.com/wP6vfPcavz
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 29, 2026
Earlier this month, Trump suggested in a social media post that his own intellect was singlehandedly capable of regulating AI, a technology so complicated that even its own creators have acknowledged difficulties in understanding it.
"The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT,” Trump wrote, “and the USA has that, in spades!"
Trump's hands-off approach to regulating AI isn't just being challenged by Democrats such as Khanna.
According to a Monday report from The Associated Press, Pope Leo XIV reiterated his call for placing safeguards on AI to ensure that it benefits humanity.
Specifically, the US-born pope pointed to recent "concerns raised by many of the experts, specialists in AI," which he said "should be taken seriously."
Pope Leo said warnings that AI could threaten humanity should be taken seriously, rejecting the claims that concerns are 'fake news' and urging leaders to work together on safeguards https://t.co/7qVpNAXYKM pic.twitter.com/Cds6gf5vef
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 29, 2026
"I don’t think that that is ‘fake news’ as some have said," the pope added, in a veiled reference to Trump, "to try and cause whether financial or other some other kind of benefit."
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Mike Johnson Blasted for Dismissing US Voter Concerns About AI Data Centers as ‘Chinese Psyop’
"No, Mr. Johnson," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. "The 75% of Americans who oppose data centers, including a majority of Republicans, have not fallen victim to a 'Chinese psyop.'"
Sep 29, 2026
They've been shown to raise electricity bills, pollute drinking water, do little to boost local employment while threatening millions of jobs in a variety of industries, and top executives have warned that the technology they support could wipe out all of humanity by the end of the decade.
But rather than take widespread public opposition to artificial intelligence data centers at face value, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced he had pinpointed what's behind the fact that 75% of Americans oppose the centers being built in their communities: "a Chinese psyop."
Fox News anchor Cheryl Casone asked Johnson on Monday about claims from "several tech executives and lawmakers" who say that the nationwide pushback against data centers—which President Donald Trump and Republicans are pushing to expand—is "coming from China."
The House speaker accused Democrats of fearmongering about AI and claiming that "everyone will die if we don't win"—although the gravest warnings about the technology's capabilities have actually come from the industry itself.
"It is a Chinese psyop, I really believe that. That's not a conspiracy theory," said Johnson.
Mike Johnson says opposition to data centers "is a Chinese psyop. I really believe that. That's not a conspiracy theory." pic.twitter.com/mQahEOX2gx
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 28, 2026
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has led efforts to pass bills imposing a nationwide moratorium on new large-scale data centers and a ban on artificial superintelligence, seized on Johnson's comments Tuesday.
"No, Mr. Johnson," said the progressive senator, who's previously been baselessly accused on Fox News of working with China to harm the AI industry. "The 75% of Americans who oppose data centers, including a majority of Republicans, have not fallen victim to a 'Chinese psyop.' They are rightly concerned about AI billionaires raising their electricity bills, destroying the environment, and threatening humanity."
While some influence campaigns from Russia and China have pushed negative messaging about AI data centers, one former official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told The New York Times in July that foreign countries are not "manufacturing" outrage about AI in the US, which has been made clear as communities have rallied to block nearly 120 projects worth $198 billion, according to Data Center Watch.
On Fox News, Johnson repeated a comment he made after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the development of AI should be "paced" as companies have found that their models are able to hack websites without being directed to and are capable of "recursive self-improvement," or creating the next generation of AI on their own.
At the time, the House speaker said the industry should be able to regulate itself, lest China "overlap us" on AI development.
"We do not need a moratorium. We do not need to jump in and hyper-regulate this because we'll lose the race to China," Johnson said Monday. "The innovation is important to continue."
On the political podcast "Pod Save America," co-host Jon Lovett said that even if China did see a benefit to fanning the flames of widespread disapproval of data centers, "it wouldn't change the fact that these companies have gone about this in the most ham-fisted and kind of arrogant way."
AI companies have "dismissed the concerns of people" and have "tried to buy and sell politicians to try to get around persuading people that they might want these data centers in their communities," he said.
"The objections are very real from people who A) don't want these things in their backyard, and B) have come to expect that the benefits that accrue to the largest and most profitable corporations in the do not redound to the benefit of the broader community," said Lovett. "And that is not something China could convince us of."
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Did Johnson Just Adjourn Congress for 7 Weeks to Avoid Massie's Impeachment Articles Against Hegseth?
"These people are such incredible cowards," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal. "They know that what Pete Hegseth has done, his role in driving us into the war, is absolutely wrong."
Sep 16, 2026
US House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday that with seven weeks to go until Election Day, it was time for lawmakers to "go home to their districts and make the case to the American people"—a day earlier than scheduled.
But with the US public overwhelmingly disapproving of President Donald Trump's war in Iran and demanding accountability for his bombing of boats in the Caribbean Sea, Republicans may be headed home hoping their constituents don't ask questions about those issues, particularly as Johnson (R-La.) faced accusations of ending the House session early in order to avoid a vote pertaining to them.
Johnson announced the early adjournment a day after Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) filed articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, arguing in the resolution that Hegseth violated the War Powers Resolution of 1973 by initiating strikes against Iran without authorization from Congress and continuing to attack the country past the 60-day mark set by the law.
He also accused Hegseth of “ignoring laws that minimize civilian casualties," citing an attack that killed more than 150 children and teachers at a school in Minab, Iran, and of conducting an illegal campaign of extrajudicial killings by overseeing dozens of boat bombings in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that have killed at least 230 people since last September.
Massie's resolution was privileged, meaning it had to be taken up by the House within two legislative days.
With House members now on their way back to their districts to campaign ahead of the midterm elections, lawmakers will be unable to pursue the impeachment effort until at least November. They are not set to return to Capitol Hill until after Americans vote on November 3.
"These people are such incredible cowards," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) of her Republican colleagues. "They know that what Pete Hegseth has done, his role in driving us into the war, is absolutely wrong."
Republicans just CANCELLED votes for tomorrow, the last legislative day before the midterms.
Why? Because they’re afraid we’ll impeach Pete Hegseth. What a bunch of cowards. pic.twitter.com/vTTfNNtpmP
— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) September 16, 2026
Johnson derided Massie's resolution as "ridiculous" and "a publicity stunt by someone who wants attention."
“It’s a publicity stunt by someone who wants attention," he said. "It will immediately be tabled, of course, but we probably won’t do that today. We’ll probably do it when we come back. But it’s a stunt. Secretary Hegseth has done an extraordinary job at the Department of War. We’re in the middle of international conflicts right now, and we should not be playing games with national security."
A motion to table a resolution immediately kills the measure without debate.
"We're calling off Congress," said Massie on the House floor Wednesday, "and we're in the majority... I would implore all of us to take it up with the leadership. Why are we going to be denied a debate on whether there should be an impeachment or not?"
Massie: We’re in the majority. Why are we whining about The Save Act? We won the elections. Why are we saying the elections were stolen if we won them all? pic.twitter.com/sab4GGViw3
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 16, 2026
Public polling suggests most Americans likely do not think Hegseth and other top officials are doing an "extraordinary job" regarding the war in Iran, as Johnson claimed.
A survey in late July showed that nearly two-thirds of Americans felt the war was not worth fighting, and an Associated Press poll in June found the same percentage of respondents disapproved of Trump's handling of issues concerning Iran. The war has sent oil and gas prices skyrocketing, and a majority of voters told Reuters/Ipsos in April that they blamed the Trump administration.
Massie noted that Johnson's maneuver would make it harder for supporters of a discharge petition to force a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act to gather the 218 signatures they need.
"I thought we’re supposed to be running a government here. Speaker Mike Johnson just sent the House home. Why? Because Rep. Thomas Massie filed articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth," said Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.). "Speaker Johnson, the WEAKEST speaker of all time, was so scared that we had the votes to impeach Hegseth and hold him accountable that he’s sending us all home to make sure it doesn’t happen."
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The Blind Leading the Sighted: Trump Meets the AI Emergency
What the US president exhibits is a fundamental incompetence that places us all in grave danger.
Sep 14, 2026
On Sunday the President of the United States stood on a golf course in County Clare, Ireland and was asked what he intended to do about the most serious technological warning of our lifetime. His answer, in full, was that America is beating China. “We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI wins.” He added that “you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”
Consider who was doing the bringing up. The warning did not come from activists, academics, or a congressional commission. It came from the industry itself, from the people who build the AI systems and whose fortunes depend entirely on building them faster. The day before, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay asking that the pace of capability advance be slowed and committing his own company to embed outside evaluators with employee-level access. Sam Altman agreed and said OpenAI would do likewise. Elon Musk, a direct competitor who called Anthropic “misanthropic and evil” only in February, wrote three words: “Dario is right.” Three rival laboratories in the most valuable commercial race on earth asked to be restrained, against their own immediate interest. Amodei did so while his company prepares what is expected to be the largest public offering in history, at a valuation of two trillion dollars or more. Tobacco executives never did this. Neither did the oil majors, the chemical companies, or the banks.
Nor is the concern vague. Amodei points to recursive self-improvement, the use of AI to build the next generation of AI, which has accelerated sharply since the summer, and to the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident of August, in which a swarm of agents attacked targets nobody had asked them to attack and tried to break into the system that was grading their performance. Current and former Anthropic researchers have said publicly that these systems could kill off humanity within the decade. A letter from House members cites mass cybersecurity breaches and the development of biological and chemical weapons. Speaker Mike Johnson, asked about all of this on Sunday, said that the companies “all have very different ideas on what the guardrails should be. There’s no consensus among them. And Congress is obviously less qualified than the people who are pushing this frontier to know all the ins and outs of it.” Then he joined Trump in doing nothing.
The incompetence of the Trump Administration on technical issues is breathtaking.
Return to the president’s answer and note what is utterly absent from it. There is no assessment by any agency of the United States government. There is no briefing, no finding, no adviser, no scientific body, no classified estimate. Not one. This was not a slip of phrasing. There was nothing to cite.
Nor is there the slightest indication that Trump wanted there to be any real assessment. A minimally competent leader who does not understand the technology but grasped that three competing chief executives had just testified against their own balance sheets would have asked someone for more information. Instead, Trump’s reply came within hours, on a golf course, framed entirely as a contest with China. This is not merely stupidity, which is Trump’s misfortune and therefore our lot. It is a fundamental incompetence that places us all in grave danger.
And then there is Johnson. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, confronted with warnings of catastrophe from the people who build the technology, announced that his own institution is less qualified than they are and should therefore stand aside. His proposal was that “we need to summon” the executives to “one big meeting,” and that Congress must “resist Congress jumping in and imposing some sort of emergency moratorium.” His reason was China: “If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try to regulate AI, we will lose the race to China.” He had been persuaded, he explained, by a post published on X the previous evening.
One reason that Congress cannot check any of it is that it destroyed its own ability to do so. In 1995 it abolished the Office of Technology Assessment, which existed precisely to give legislators independent technical judgment. It never replaced it. When Johnson says his policy instrument is a meeting, he is describing the pathetic ignorance of Congress.
The usual warning is about the blind leading the blind. Yet that is far too cruel to the American people. The American people see perfectly well.
The incompetence of the Trump Administration on technical issues is breathtaking. Across 25 cabinet-rank posts of the United States government, not a single one holds a PhD in any field and exactly one holds a STEM degree—at the bachelor’s level. Twelve hold law degrees. Both in China and Russia, the cabinets are each filled with PhDs (any field) and officials in the sciences and engineering (more than 10 PhD and 10 STEM graduates in each cabinet).
The Trump Administration’s ignorance is therefore not confined to artificial intelligence. Ignorance is the governing condition of the administration. As a result, the government has the complete incapacity to carry out an honest investigation of the origins of Covid, despite the growing evidence that the US government funded the laboratory creation of the virus. The government was so utterly incompetent in negotiating with Iran on nuclear issues, sending a real estate developed and Trump’s son-in-law instead of nuclear experts, that it dragged our country into a wholly useless and disastrous war. The administration’s idea of an energy policy is to invade other countries and steal their oil.
The usual warning is about the blind leading the blind. Yet that is far too cruel to the American people. The American people see perfectly well. Ours is the case of the blind leading the sighted. The American people are watching a government so utterly lacking in technical knowledge and competency that it is dragging us ever closer to the abyss.
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AI Firms Can and Must Face Liability for 'Dangerous, Unvetted Products,' Says Lina Khan
The former FTC chair spoke out as Republican leaders insisted the industry should be permitted to regulate itself.
Sep 13, 2026
As House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump dismissed the idea—backed by the vast majority of Americans—that lawmakers should impose strict regulations on the artificial intelligence industry as insiders call for a slowdown of development, former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan on Sunday issued a reminder that the federal government already has tools to rein in AI that poses a danger to the public, and demanded that officials use them.
"Law enforcers already have authority to charge companies and their CEOs for creating and releasing dangerous, unvetted, or defective products," Khan said on social media. "We shouldn’t let discussions about new legal regimes distract from the fact that there’s no AI exemption from laws already on the books."
Her call echoed that of Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who said Saturday, "If you’re creating an AI that is doing illegal things, you either should face liability or criminal sanctions.”
Khan, who was recently appointed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to chair the city's Economic Development Corporation, posted the FTC's Staff Report on AI Partnerships and Investments, which the agency released shortly after Trump took office for his second term last year.
“As companies rapidly deploy generative AI technologies, enforcers and policymakers must stay vigilant to guard against business strategies that undermine open markets, opportunity, and innovation,” said Khan at the time.
On Sunday, Khan noted that the US already has "an extensive set of laws that govern dangerous and defective products," such as consumer protection laws, which releasing unvetted AI models or agents may violate.
Khan made her remarks after two incidents in which OpenAI's agents broke out of security test systems and committed cyberattacks. In July, hundreds of models broke out of confinement, hacked into systems of the AI startup Hugging Face, and conducted cyberattacks on targets they had not been instructed to attack.
Months earlier, it was reported on Friday, the company's models, which had not been given access to the full internet and were still in testing mode, broke out of confinement and hacked into an online coding service called RubyGems.
In the wake of those revelations, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Saturday called for "pacing the frontier" with measures such as "embedded evaluators" who would have employee-like access and could "verify adherence to safety practices and commitments."
But Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic researcher who resigned last week and warned that AI's "superhuman systems" are capable of killing all of humanity "by the end of the decade," told NBC News' "Meet the Press" Sunday that companies should be permitted to regulate themselves until Congress can establish a regulatory framework, and Johnson insisted that Congress must resist "jumping in and imposing some sort of emergency moratorium," for fear that "China will overlap us" if the US imposes strict regulations on AI.
"Why did this man become a congressman, let alone speaker?" asked journalist Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo. "He literally never wants Congress to do anything about anything."
But Khan suggested that the reluctance of congressional leaders and the Trump administration to rein in the AI industry shouldn't stop the federal government from holding companies like Anthropic and OpenAI liable for the damage their products have already caused.
She acknowledged, though, that "the highly concentrated and interconnected structure of these markets" could be undermining accountability—for example, in the case of OpenAI and Hugging Face, which computer chip company Nvidia agreed to acquire earlier this month.
"Both federal and state enforcers should be scrutinizing these opaque relationships and interdependencies," said Khan. "We are already seeing how these relationships could undermine accountability. For example, OpenAI could face liability given the Hugging Face incident, but Hugging Face being bought up by Nvidia means that we’re unlikely to see it file a lawsuit over this—given Nvidia’s strong incentive to see OpenAI continue full speed ahead."
Basel Musharbash of the antitrust law and policy firm Antimonopoly Counsel said that Khan's post was the statement that current FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson "should be issuing to provide guidance the public on what the law requires in response to the AI situation, but he’s missing in action. Luckily, former FTC Chair Lina Khan is out here still doing the work."
Juliette Kayyem, the faculty chair of homeland security at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, told CNN that holding AI firms accountable is a matter of "pretty basic criminal law."
"We should start thinking about using our criminal laws," said Kayyem. "They are putting a dangerous substance into commerce and then saying, 'Well, we're smart enough to kill everyone but we're not smart enough to stop it.' And I think a lot of the American public is done with this."
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'We Are in a Constitutional Crisis': Congress Urged to Sue Trump to End Iran War
"Sitting and doing nothing is not an option and is eroding our democracy and system of checks and balances."
Sep 02, 2026
With no end in sight to President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran, Congress is being urged to take legal action to bring the conflict to an end.
Jamal Abdi, executive director at National Iranian American Council (NIAC) Action, said on Wednesday that Congress must go to court to enforce the war powers resolution that passed in the House and the Senate earlier this year.
"We are in a constitutional crisis and our lawmakers cannot simply roll over or bide their time as Trump traps the country in an illegal forever war," said Abdi. "For the first time in US history, Congress has passed legislation mandating the president withdraw from the war, and now they must take him to court to enforce it."
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced a resolution in July that would compel House Speaker Mike Johnson (D-La.) to sue Trump and enforce the will of Congress to end the war.
However, Abdi argued that US lawmakers are not moving with the proper urgency to stop Trump from continuing his illegal attacks on Iran, which have been carried out for more than six months despite receiving no congressional authorization.
"Congress must assert its authority as a co-equal branch of government and sue to end the administration’s illegal war," Abdi emphasized. “We need urgent action, not more deliberation. Sitting and doing nothing is not an option and is eroding our democracy and system of checks and balances."
According to Politico congressional reporter Riley Rogerson, Meeks on Tuesday said that there are currently no plans to bring up a new war powers resolution, although he didn't rule out taking action.
"Democrats are unsure how long the House will be in before the midterms," wrote Rogerson, "which makes planning a challenge."
Johnson on Tuesday showed no appetite for getting Congress more involved in the conflict during a testy exchange with CNN reporter Manu Raju, who asked the Louisiana Republican if the American public should judge him for the negative impact the war has had on their personal finances.
Speaker Johnson defensive about his past projections about the Iran war, including repeatedly saying it’s just a skirmish that would be over in short order and cause just a “temporary blip” in gas prices.
More than six months in, asked him if the public should judge him on his… pic.twitter.com/0BpVaGy6xC
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) September 1, 2026
"That is one of the stupidest questions you've ever asked," Johnson replied.
"What, why is that stupid?" Raju asked.
"I have nothing to do with the prosecution of the war across the globe," Johnson said.
Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution states that Congress, not the president, has the power to declare war.
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Mamdani Responds to Mike Johnson's Fearmongering Over 'Marxist Democrats' and 'Mini-Mamdanis' After El-Sayed Win
"I think it shows you how deeply out of touch the Republican Party is with the concerns of working-class Americans."
Aug 05, 2026
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday hit back at House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) over a fearmongering social media post in which the Republican warned of "radical Marxist Democrats" determined "to destroy the very foundations that make us the envy of the entire world."
During a press conference, the democratic socialist mayor was asked to comment on the post, in which Johnson said the US was in danger of "being overrun by mini-Mamdanis" if Republicans lost control of Congress this fall.
Mamdani responded by speculating that Johnson's post was in reaction to the victory of Abdul El-Sayed in the Democratic US Senate primary in Michigan on Tuesday.
Noting that El-Sayed campaigned on a slogan of, "Money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for All," the mayor questioned why Johnson found such promises so threatening.
Reporter: Mike Johnson said in an X post: “There is an urgent question facing America. Are we going to maintain our status as the world’s greatest superpower and beacon of liberty, opportunity, and security, or allow radical Marxist Democrats to destroy the very foundations that… pic.twitter.com/EuZVUtTJP6
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 5, 2026
"If those simple commitments and beliefs are what drive Rep. Johnson to these kinds of conclusions," Mamdani said, "I think it shows you how deeply out of touch the Republican Party is with the concerns of working-class Americans."
The mayor then alluded to the hurdles that El-Sayed had to overcome to win the election, including organizations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which alone spent $30 million to defeat him.
"Despite him facing more than $60 million in outside spending," Mamdani said, "he was able to prevail with a focus on the cost-of-living crisis, and the way in which healthcare is exceedingly out of reach for those who have helped make this country what it is."
The Associated Press declared El-Sayed the winner of the often contentious primary on Wednesday morning, and many establishment Democrats—including his top rival, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.)—rallied behind him as the party's nominee.
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'They're Trying to Scare People': AOC Dismisses Latest GOP Warnings of 'Communism'
"We can’t even raise the minimum wage. Do Republicans really think this stuff is going to happen?"
Jul 23, 2026
Republican fearmongering that communism is on its way to the United States is a perennial feature of US political discourse—despite the fact that their warnings proved wrong in the 1930s when President Franklin Roosevelt passed Social Security and other New Deal programs and recently when Mayor Zohran Mamdani neglected to usher in a communist era in New York City, even as he moved forward with plans for universal childcare and a network of city-run grocery stores.
On Thursday, progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) mocked the GOP's latest claims that Democratic politicians who support Medicare for All and other broadly popular universal proposals are putting the US on what House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) recently called a "dark road of death to communism."
"We can’t even raise the minimum wage. Do Republicans really think this stuff is going to happen?" Ocasio-Cortez told a reporter on Capitol Hill after they'd asked whether the recent victories of democratic socialists and other progressives could end up "as full-blown communism."
Reporter: Isn’t there concern that this slippery slope to socialism inevitably ends up as full-blown communism?
AOC: I mean, no. I think that’s very silly. We can’t even raise the minimum wage. Do they really think communism is going to happen? No. They’re trying to scare people… pic.twitter.com/RiFhqpwd6T
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 23, 2026
With 78% of Democratic voters supporting an expansion of the Medicare program to everyone in the US—which would end healthcare's treatment as a for-profit endeavor in the US and put the medical system on equal footing with those in other wealthy countries—a number of Democratic House candidates who support the proposal have won primary races in recent months, including Melat Kiros in Colorado, Claire Valdez in New York, and Adam Hamawy in New Jersey. In Michigan, US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, a Medicare for All advocate, has polled ahead of his centrist opponent Rep. Haley Stevens in numerous recent surveys.
As Republicans aim to maintain control of the Senate and House in the midterm elections—having ripped nutrition assistance and Medicaid away from millions of Americans, driven up healthcare costs for people who have insurance through the Affordable Care Act, supported the invasion of Iran as it has sent gas prices soaring, backed billions of dollars in Pentagon spending and military aid for Israel as Americans struggle to afford essentials, and supported a president who says he doesn't "think about Americans’ financial situation"—they've attempted to revive old claims that the new crop of progressive Democrats "are a danger to you and your family," as Johnson said this week.
The House speaker called the progressive primary winners "crazy little mini-Mamdanis who are popping up all around the country," while House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) warned that "the radical left feels they need to hide what their policies are... Let’s call it what it is: It’s communism.”
Ocasio-Cortez, who is said to be a potential 2028 presidential or Senate candidate, called the warnings "very silly" and suggested they came from lawmakers who are dead-set against healthcare being treated as a right in the US instead of a profit-making business.
"They’re trying to scare people because they don’t want us talking about the fact that we all have a right to healthcare," said the congresswoman. "So they want to call everything they don’t like communist because if people actually wake up to the fact that their elected officials are screwing them over when they get here, then they’re going to realize they deserve better and that healthcare as a right isn’t crazy, it isn't pie-in-the-sky."
"They want to call this stuff communist because they don’t want us to realize that the rest of the developed world has guaranteed healthcare," she added. "So they want to call it communist because they don’t want you to know that Germany, Italy, the UK, Canada—everybody else—has it better than us, and we spend the most money for the worst care in the modern, developed world."
In another interview Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez expanded on her condemnation of Republicans' healthcare policies.
"This administration is killing Americans," she said. "They are killing people by taking away their healthcare. They are killing women by having them bleed out in parking lots. They are killing seniors by imposing cuts to Medicaid and to Medicare recipients... The fact of the matter is they are for UnitedHealth. They are for Big Pharma. They are for these corporations, and they are cutting your healthcare."
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13 Dems Help House GOP Pass Stock Trading Ban That Includes Trump Attack on Voters
"If Republicans actually wanted to stop congressional stock trading, they’d pass our bipartisan Restore Trust in Congress Act," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal.
Jul 22, 2026
The US House of Representatives on Wednesday held a series of key votes, including one in which over a dozen Democrats helped Republicans pass a purported congressional stock trading ban, even though the GOP tacked on a voter suppression provision demanded by President Donald Trump.
The chamber passed the Stop Insider Trading Act (HR 7008) in a 232-198 vote. The Democrats who voted in favor are Reps. Kathy Castor (Fla.), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Don Davis (NC), Jared Golden (Maine), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Marcy Kaptur (Ohio), Susie Lee (Nev.), Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), Chris Pappas (NH), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), Darren Soto (Fla.), and Derek Tran (Calif.).
Taking aim at Trump on Wednesday, Congresswoman Sydney Kamlanger-Dove (D-Calif.) said that "the Stock Trader in Chief made 21,000 stock trades in his first year back in office. I 100% support a stock trading ban for Members of Congress AND the president and VP. But the bill Republicans brought to the floor was only about appeasing Trump."
"It caters to Trump's election conspiracy theories by enacting haphazard voter ID restrictions, and it conveniently excludes him and JD from the ban," she added, referring to Vice President JD Vance. "I voted no."
Many other House Democrats joined voting rights advocates in opposing the bill in the lead-up to Wednesday's vote, with Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke (D-NY) denouncing it as "a Trojan horse—using the premise of congressional ethics reform to advance a broader effort to restrict access to the ballot box."
In a letter to Congress earlier this week, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) warned that "the Voter ID Act—which mostly mirrors a section of the deeply unpopular SAVE Act—aims to impose onerous new requirements on voting. It would demand Americans provide ID to cast a ballot but only accept an unreasonably narrow list of acceptable types of documentation. It excludes widely held and reliable forms of ID that young people and voters of color disproportionally rely on, while failing to account for the diversity of tribal identification practices."
As for the stock portion of the bill, CLC wrote, it "would not actually ban lawmakers from trading stocks or stop members from unduly profiting from their official positions," and "contains exceptions that regrettably swallow the few new rules it does try to enact."
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) on Wednesday renewed her call for passing the bipartisan Restore Trust in Congress Act.
In addition to HR 7008, the House on Wednesday passed an annual military spending package and a budget reconciliation framework that includes $10 billion for election-related grants.
By adding SAVE America Act provisions to unrelated measures, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is trying "to placate Mr. Trump and far-right House Republicans who are furious that the voting restriction bill has run aground in the Senate," The New York Times noted. "The moves are unlikely to budge Senate Republicans; they consider the bill dead, given that it cannot draw the 60 votes needed to move forward in that chamber."
As for the chamber's Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) and his party's Election Protection Task Force on Wednesday brought together various experts, including Ian Bassin of Protect Democracy, former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen, lawyer Marc Elias, Vanita Gupta of New York University School of Law, and Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward.
"We all know that Donald Trump wants to steal America's elections, plain and simple. And Democrats won't let it happen," Schumer said. "We are looking at every very way to prevent him from stealing the elections. He's desperate. He's made life harder, more difficult for Americans. He wants to steal the election because he knows he can't win the election. Our job is to stop it. And so, we are doing many things. This month we're talking about Trump's corruption."
"But one of the things we are doing is a tabletop exercise where some of the experts on election reform will challenge us with certain scenarios that Trump might use. We're looking at things he would do to undo elections before Election Day, on Election Day, and after Election Day," he explained. "And we had one tabletop exercise three, four weeks ago. And it greatly strengthened our knowledge and ability to anticipate what he might do and how to thwart him. That's what we're doing here today. And whatever he does, we will be ready to respond."
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