Democrats slam Johnson decision to send House lawmakers home early
Many Democrats are slamming the decision by Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, to send lower chamber lawmakers home a day early for the pre-election recess. The move means that votes scheduled for Thursday, including on a proposal to impeach Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, have been canceled.
In a straight-to-camera video posted on X, Melanie Stansbury, a Democratic congresswoman from New Mexico, said the impeachment vote was the “only one explanation” to cancel the House’s legislative agenda on Thursday.
“The speaker obviously, and obviously the president does not want that, and so instead they’re just gonna send us home,” Stansbury said. “They don’t want to hold Hegseth accountable for his blatantly illegal war in the Middle East that is harming Americans, that has killed service members, that has killed thousands of civilians, that has dragged our country into an economic spiral and is literally harming every single American.”
Some Republicans also expressed frustration with the speaker’s decision.
“Canceling yet another day of votes is unacceptable,” said Ralph Norman, a GOP representative from South Carolina. “The House has now canceled at least 63 scheduled voting days this Congress, including nine days this month alone, and now we’re leaving Washington until after the election.”
Key events
Thomas Massie, the Republican congressman who introduced the impeachment resolution against defense secretary Pete Hegseth, is on the House floor, railing against Mike Johnson’s decision to send lawmakers home early.
“When other people want to go home, I’m here to work,” Massie said.
A reminder that earlier, the House speaker justified the move by saying that “it’s time for our members to go home to their districts and make their case to the American people”, adding that the lower chamber has “done its work”.
Democrats slam Johnson decision to send House lawmakers home early
Many Democrats are slamming the decision by Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, to send lower chamber lawmakers home a day early for the pre-election recess. The move means that votes scheduled for Thursday, including on a proposal to impeach Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, have been canceled.
In a straight-to-camera video posted on X, Melanie Stansbury, a Democratic congresswoman from New Mexico, said the impeachment vote was the “only one explanation” to cancel the House’s legislative agenda on Thursday.
“The speaker obviously, and obviously the president does not want that, and so instead they’re just gonna send us home,” Stansbury said. “They don’t want to hold Hegseth accountable for his blatantly illegal war in the Middle East that is harming Americans, that has killed service members, that has killed thousands of civilians, that has dragged our country into an economic spiral and is literally harming every single American.”
Some Republicans also expressed frustration with the speaker’s decision.
“Canceling yet another day of votes is unacceptable,” said Ralph Norman, a GOP representative from South Carolina. “The House has now canceled at least 63 scheduled voting days this Congress, including nine days this month alone, and now we’re leaving Washington until after the election.”
Fencing placed around Kennedy Center after board voted to close building
As we noted yesterday, the Kennedy Center board, handpicked by Donald Trump, voted again to close the institution’s performing arts building in Washington, citing safety and financial concerns.
Now, we’re getting pictures of the fencing around the institution as it prepares for the two-year renovation project. However, Trump has threatened to call off the improvements if federal courts did not allow his name to be placed on the front of the building.
Anna Betts
More than a dozen survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse have praised the House oversight committee for unanimously voting to recommend that billionaire investor Leon Black be held in contempt for refusing to comply with subpoenas by the panel seeking his testimony and nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) as part of its investigation into Epstein.
“We commend Chairman [James] Comer for showing real resolve in pursuing accountability in the Epstein investigation,” the survivors said in a statement. They said that the 41-0 vote sends a “clear message that wealth and influence do not put anyone beyond the reach of congressional oversight”.
“Survivors have fought for years to bring the truth about Epstein’s network into the open and have helped create this moment of accountability,” they added. “Congress now has an opportunity to build on that work by following the investigative leads contained in the Epstein files wherever they go and demanding answers from the powerful people connected to them.”
The vote yesterday marked the latest escalation in the dispute between the committee and Black, whose name came up repeatedly in the Epstein files, and who, as reported by the New York Times, paid Epstein a total of $170m for what he described as tax and estate planning services from 2013 to 2017. The contempt resolution now goes to the full House for consideration, if speaker Mike Johnson permits a vote.
Black has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and said he had no knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activities.
Here’s Anna’s report:
How united are the Democrats ahead of November’s midterms? Our US political reporters are live now to discuss the state of the party, its moderate and leftwing candidates, and key races to watch.
You can follow the Q&A here:
Anthropic exec: ‘You can’t do safety from second place’
Anthropic’s head of public policy, Sarah Heck, said the US “needs to stay in the lead” on AI, asserting: “You can’t do safety from second place.”
She told the Politico Decoded summit that in order for the US to hold its edge, the country must keep its restrictions on sales to China of the most advanced AI chips.
Safety concerns have been “at the core” for Anthropic, she said, adding that the company is focused on working with lawmakers to pass new regulations for AI.
We do think it’s existential to do this. We do think we have to balance the risk now. The capabilities are only increasing and increasing at a pace that is accelerating.
Heck also argued that leaving it to AI companies to self-regulate – as Republican congressional leaders continue to argue – is not sufficient to address the risks.
I don’t think that there’s a world where you do safety and people are accepting of AI companies just doing it on honor code. We can’t be checking our own homework.
Joseph Gedeon
Hugging Face’s Clément Delangue asked OpenAI for $100m worth of computing power in July, after an OpenAI agent broke containment and autonomously hacked his company’s systems. Two months on, he says it still hasn’t arrived.
“It’s a work in progress,” Delangue said at the Politico Decoded Summit, when asked whether OpenAI had delivered the money. He noted the ask was never just about one company – Hugging Face has since found that other frontier labs ran into the same problem defending themselves.
On the standoff between Anthropic and the Pentagon over training its own models, Delangue said AI is “a very foundational technology” that and institutions of every kind, governments included, need to stop treating it as something to lease from a handful of labs.
“We need to create the conditions for everyone to build it themselves,” he said, rather than “renting it from someone else”.
Joseph Gedeon
Former Biden commerce secretary Gina Raimondo and former Republican governor of Indiana Eric Holcomb, who both call themselves “AI optimists”, tag-teamed this summer to launch Raise US, meant to address a transition for American workers to the AI economy.
Raimondo, at the Politico AI and Tech Summit, said that they’ve “raised almost $700m to be invested over five years to fund projects, experiments, pilots”.
While both sit across the aisle politically, they similarly agreed that they are against a universal basic income and socialism, and support reining in China.
Patrick Wintour
Officials from the US met Houthi leaders over the weekend at the country’s embassy in Muscat, Oman, it has been confirmed, leading to the US decision not to intervene to help Saudi Arabia drive back a Houthi advance inside Yemen.
The Houthis reassured the US that the ceasefire agreement between the two sides struck in 2025 still held and the movement had no intention of attacking US shipping in the Red Sea. Only Saudi-linked shipping was regarded as a target owing to its blockade of Yemen, the Houthis confirmed.
The meeting helps to explain the decision from the US president, Donald Trump, to condemn the Houthi advance down the west coast of Yemen for threatening freedom of navigation through the Bab al-Mandab strait, but so far to reject any military response in support of Riyadh. The US is already embroiled in an expensive and resource-sapping conflict with Iran, which backs the Houthis.
Here’s Patrick’s report:
The decision to cancel tomorrow’s votes in the House comes as dozens of Democratic lawmakers have asked Mike Johnson to postpone the pre-election recess, that was due to start on Friday, to address the deluge of calls for Congress to regulate the development of artificial intelligence. This comes after industry executives and whistleblowers have expressed a need for greater regulation.
Johnson, however, has been reluctant to intervene – aligning himself with Donald Trump. “We cannot have a moratorium on the development of AI,” the House speaker told reporters on Tuesday. “Because then we will lose our edge to China, and that has serious national security implications for every American family.”
House cancels Thursday votes, sending lawmakers home early for midterm recess
The House speaker, Mike Johnson, has cancelled votes currently scheduled for tomorrow (Thursday). This means that lower chamber lawmakers will now head back to their districts for the midterm recess a day early.
The change to schedule means that the House will avoid voting on Republican congressman Thomas Massie’s resolution to impeach the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.
Trump’s pick for surgeon general avoids mentioning vaccines in opening remarks at confirmation hearing
Dr Nicole Saphier, the president’s pick to serve as US surgeon general, avoided mentioning vaccines directly in her opening remarks. Instead she expressed her Make America Healthy Again bona fides.
“I have long believed that we spend too much time and resources treating chronic disease after it takes hold, and not enough time helping Americans reduce their risk before illness begins. And unfortunately, we’re seeing the consequences of that imbalance right now: rising cancer rates in people under 50, cardiovascular disease that remains the number one killer, but also is largely preventable in lots of cases,” Saphier said.
Later, the Senate health committee’s Republican chair, Bill Cassidy, pushed Saphier about whether she would tell parents concerned about the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine that it does not cause autism. A reminder that there is no reputable evidence that proves a link between the two.
“I’m so sensitive to this because I’ve had wriggle room from people sitting there … who later use that wriggle room to do things which are quite contrary?” Cassidy said, referring to the various promises that Robert F Kennedy Jr made to the top Republican in his confirmation hearing, only for the health secretary to renege on several occasions.
“Would you feel comfortable communicating with clarity … Is the MMR vaccine extremely lethal, as the president said?” Cassidy asked Saphier today.
The nominee for surgeon general said that she “cannot speak to what the president has said” but went on to say: “I do not believe the MMR vaccine to be lethal. I believe the MMR vaccine is our greatest tool for combating measles.”
Saphier, who is a practising radiologist and Fox News contributor, added: “The best tool we have to combat these infections to save the most lives and to also create population herd immunity is vaccination against the MMR. I appreciate the president is trying to reach vaccine-hesitant people who are wanting more answers or who are concerned that there are too many doses.”
Cassidy, however, remained unconvinced by the president’s public health strategy. “I’m not sure that you reach people who are vaccine hesitant by feeding into untruths,” the chair said.
