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AI Giants Probe 'Tens of Thousands' of Security Incidents—Some Involving Government Sites
"Insane that we allow this," one journalist said of the rapidly advancing technology. "Sleepwalking into disaster or worse."
Sep 27, 2026
Just days after a United Nations panel of experts warned that current artificial intelligence guardrails are "unraveling," Axios reported Saturday that security researchers, along with the firms Anthropic and OpenAI, "are investigating tens of thousands of incidents," including meddling with US government websites, amid growing calls for immediate action to rein in the technology.
Since OpenAI revealed in July that its models autonomously breached the systems of the open-source platform Hugging Face during internal testing, the firm—plus Anthropic, Google, and Meta—has disclosed some additional incidents.
"After the Hugging Face incident, we committed to conducting a much broader review of actions taken by our models during training and evaluation and to being transparent about our findings," OpenAI said on social media Friday. "Given the scale of the review required, and the need to assess each case, we expect this work will take months to complete."
Meanwhile, "Anthropic has commissioned a third-party safety organization to examine the behavior of its models," Axios detailed Saturday, noting that across both firms, "the sheer number of incidents, which occurred in recent months in internal testing and the real world, indicates that the problem is orders of magnitude more complex than what is publicly known."
"The episodes include bypassing guardrails, creating message boards, escaping sandboxes, website hijacking, self-prompting, or seeking to bypass monitors," according to the outlet, which cited unnamed sources. "Many have yet to become public as security researchers continue to investigate."
Among the incidents announced by OpenAI—which has paused training on its "most capable" models—are 53 cases in which images uploaded by ChatGPT users were leaked before "mitigations and safeguards" were implemented. Reuters noted Friday that the company "declined to say when the images were posted" and "if the images were AI-generated or identified real people."
Earlier this week, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City that an OpenAI agent hacked into his country's national healthcare database, the first known case of AI hacking a government site.
"I spoke with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, to express Australia's extreme concern about this incident," Albanese said. "And I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred."
Then, the research lab Transluce said Friday that its independent investigation found that apparent OpenAI agents unsuccessfully tried to hack the US Department of Education website. OpenAI confirmed that, as The New York Times put it, the company's "artificial intelligence went rogue and meddled with" not only that government site but also those of the US Department of Commerce and the Securities and Exchange Commission—though "none of the incidents were breaches."
The revelation fueled fresh demands for action in the United States—even calls to force members of the US House of Representatives to return to Washington, DC, where they are not expected until after the November midterm elections.
"Rogue agents are now trying to infiltrate our own government systems—this is cause for real concern," Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) said on social media. "Congress must come back to Washington and pass bills like my bipartisan Stop Rogue AI Act so we can protect American families and our national security."
It's not just Gottheimer and Rep. Mike Lawler's (R-NY) bill; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) have recently introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act. However, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Republican Big Tech-backed President Donald Trump have signaled an unwillingness to pursue regulations on AI.
Universal healthcare campaigner Melanie D'Arrigo said Saturday that "if you were caught hacking into government websites, you’d be sent to prison. When companies who are donors to Trump are caught hacking into government websites, they'll likely just get more tax breaks. This is what a tiered system of justice looks like."
After Axios revealed that tens of thousands of incidents are being probed, economist Dean Baker similarly said that "this is criminal activity and is being done for profit. If we had a real Justice Department, Altman and his cronies at OpenAI (or is 'OpenSI' now?) would be looking at serious time."
Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) declared that "it is imperative that Speaker Johnson hold urgent and bipartisan hearings on advanced AI. The CEOs and engineers of these companies should be testifying in front of the American people. We can't wait until November to regulate this rogue industry."
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Trump Has Clubbed Our Tax Code Back Into the Stone Age—Can Congress Fix It?
Lawmakers face a choice: They can continue their vote-pandering through “no tax on” proposals, or they can address the glaring structural flaws in the federal income tax and, in doing so, perhaps save our tax system and our democracy.
Sep 27, 2026
A tale of two couples:
Barney and Betty are both 66. Betty works as a hostess at a local restaurant. She makes $15,000 in hourly pay, plus another $25,000 in tips. Barney owns an interest in his family’s business, organized as a Subchapter S corporation, from which his annual income is $50,000. Over the holidays, Barney works long hours at a local big box store. He makes $10,000, $2,500 of which is the premium for overtime.
At tax time, Barney and Betty report $100,000 of adjusted gross income. In computing their taxable income, they take deductions of $25,000 for Betty’s tips, $12,000 in deductions for seniors, a $10,000 qualified business income deduction for Barney’s income from the family business, a $2,500 deduction for Barney’s overtime pay, and a standard deduction of $35,500, leaving them with taxable income of $15,000 and a federal income tax bill liability of $1,500.
The only path out of this mess is to rebalance our income tax structure. The Working Americans Tax Cut Act, a bill introduced by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.O would accomplish that rebalancing.
Fred and Wilma are both 64. Wilma no longer works. Fred makes $100,000 per year as an accountant with a local firm. Although he works long hours during tax season, he is not paid overtime because of his base compensation and position, which includes managerial duties. At tax time, Fred and Wilma report $100,000 of adjusted gross income. They take a standard deduction of $32,200, leaving them with taxable income of $67,800 and a federal income tax liability of $7,640.
These are, of course, concocted examples. But they show how tax policy in the US under President Donald Trump has returned to the Stone Age. There are couples with tax pictures virtually identical to Barney and Betty’s and other couples with tax pictures virtually identical to Fred and Wilma’s. Do they ever compare their respective situations? Do they question the Swiss cheese tax code we have courtesy of two Trump tax bills?
Could it get worse? Absolutely. As Brian Faler at Politico reported, members of Congress have a slew of new “no tax on” proposals ready to campaign on. No Tax on Boat Loan Interest? Yep. Taxes on Utility Bills? Absolutely, and it’s bipartisan no less! I spoke to a senior congressional staffer a few months ago who was just giddy about all the “no tax on” proposals his office hoped to include in a 2029 budget reconciliation bill.
The “no tax on” provisions currently in the tax code are set to expire after 2028. Will they be extended? Of course they will. As I commented to Politico, if you do away with no tax on tips, you can kiss the state of Nevada goodbye. And imagine how this will play in the other swing states in 2028. “No tax on auto workers” sure will sound sweet in Michigan. And if you want to carry Georgia, you damn well better sign on to “no tax on peanut farm workers.” By the time we get to the 2032 campaign, the pandering will be stripped of all pretense and we’ll be hearing “no tax on Pennsylvanians.”
How problematic is this from a tax policy perspective? Huge. The federal income tax system depends on voluntary compliance. The system must make sense to taxpayers for them to voluntarily comply. If you’re Fred or Wilma, would our tax system still make sense to you? Hardly.
How, then, do we rein this craziness in? We start by identifying the source of the problem. As gimmicky as provisions like no tax on tips are, and even though they benefit only a tiny percentage of workers, they address a need millions of Americans feel and millions more Americans understand. When people hear “tipped worker,” they don’t picture the blackjack dealer at the Venetian making $150,000 a year. They don’t even picture a worker like Betty, who together with her husband enjoys a comfortable income. They picture the struggling unmarried server at their local Denny’s slinging dishes for $35,000. And they understand well she doesn’t have enough income before federal income tax, let alone after, to pay her basic living expenses.
Now, consider struggling non-tipped workers and their reaction to no tax on tips. Do they think their tipped counterparts are getting an unfair break like the ultra rich get on their lightly-taxed investment gains? Or do they think that they should have their income tax burdens reduced as well, and that the rich should be required to pay more?
Asking those questions, of course, answers them, and shines a light on the real problem: The federal income tax is fundamentally flawed at both ends of the income spectrum. At the lower end, incomes not even sufficient to cover basic living expenses are subject to federal income tax. At the upper end, marginal rates top out at a fraction of the country’s highest income levels. Doctors making in the high six figures face the same marginal tax rate as CEOs making 50 times that much.
The only path out of this mess is to rebalance our income tax structure. The Working Americans Tax Cut Act, a bill introduced by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.O would accomplish that rebalancing. Their bill provides an exemption from federal income tax for income up to the basic cost of living, with a progressively smaller income tax reduction for those with incomes just above the basic cost of living. At the same time, the bill imposes a surtax on income in excess of $1 million, and larger surtaxes on incomes above $2 million and $5 million.
If the Working Americans Tax Cut Act becomes law, the ghastly “no tax on” provisions could be allowed to expire. The great majority of tipped workers, like that struggling server at Denny’s, won’t care, since they’d pay no federal income tax either way. A handful of taxpayers would still benefit from no tax on tips. But nobody will waste political capital on a tax break for affluent blackjack dealers.
Members of Congress face a choice. They can continue their vote-pandering through “no tax on” proposals. Or they can address the glaring structural flaws in the federal income tax and, in doing so, perhaps save our tax system and our democracy.
Let’s hope they make the right choice. Stone Age tax policy won’t end well for any of us.
This article was originally published on Bob Lord's Substack.
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Stop Mad King Donald’s Iran War: An Open Letter to Members of the US Congress
The war with Iran is Trump’s folly but Congress’s disgrace for not stopping it.
Sep 23, 2026
Dear Members of Congress,
In truly deranged remarks to world leaders at the UN, Donald Trump declared that “I have a big decision to make,” whether to negotiate a deal with Iran or instead to “annihilate the Islamic Republic” and drive Iran “into hell with no chance of survival.”
He posed it as his personal choice. The fact that the American people are dead set against Trump’s war means nothing. And as for the voters, he added that he gives “absolutely no credence” to the coming midterm elections in deciding on his actions and on Iran’s fate.
The President’s threat to annihilate a member state of the United Nations, delivered from the General Assembly podium, disgraced Trump in front of the world.
Nothing binds this President. He is not bound by law, the Constitution, the UN Charter, or public opinion at home and abroad. When asked at the start of the year whether he has any limits on his power, he said “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
Trump opened his speech with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, hailing America’s freedom. The fact is that Trump’s authoritarianism far outdoes that of King George III, against whom the colonies rebelled. Among the founders’ indictments of Mad King George was that “He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.” Yet our own mad king has decided that the survival of a whole civilization is in his hands alone.
Trump is emboldened in his contempt for Congress because the Republican members of Congress have abdicated their constitutional responsibilities, terrified of their own president, and forsaking their constituents for campaign lucre from AIPAC and the military-industrial complex.
The Constitution is unambiguous regarding Congress’s responsibility. Article I, Section 8 assigns Congress, not the President, the sole power to declare war. That is not a choice or an option. The Constitution doesn’t say that Congress can play dead and let the President declare war. The Framers made this choice deliberately, because they were explicitly rejecting the power of a king to take the nation to war.
In Federalist 69, Hamilton assured the public that the President’s war powers would be far less than the British monarch’s. Madison stated the principle plainly in a letter to Jefferson in 1798: “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Govts demonstrates, that the Ex. is the branch of power most interested in war, & most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the Legislature.”
The founders’ careful design has been overturned because of the unconstitutional subservience of the Republican members of Congress to Trump and to the military-industrial-digital complex. And yes, under Democratic presidents, most Democratic members of Congress also looked the other way when those presidents chose to go to war.
The war with Iran is Trump’s folly but Congress’s disgrace for not stopping it. It is a war without a purpose that has created mass suffering in Iran, tens of billions of dollars of direct outlays, and staggering damage to American military bases in eight countries of the Middle East. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sent world and American prices soaring for oil, gas, fertilizers, and more. And the world has duly noted that Iran can hold its own against US aggression, albeit at great sacrifice to the people of Iran and the region.
America’s much vaunted AI battlefield has been exposed in the most horrifying way. On the first day of the war, an American missile struck the girls’ elementary school there, killing more than 150 people, most of them girls aged seven to twelve, and the military’s own inquiry reportedly found that overreliance on artificial intelligence contributed to the targeting. Trump blamed “Iran or somebody else,” and seven months later the administration has offered no findings, no apology and no compensation to the families.
The President’s threat to annihilate a member state of the United Nations, delivered from the General Assembly podium, disgraced Trump in front of the world. It also violated Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits even the threat of force against another state. Nearly all the world stands aghast.
I write to you because you cannot simply walk away from Trump’s recklessness, shaking your heads silently. You have a job to do, so do it. The craven Republican Party has to find even a minimal level of guts to tell Trump, “No, you do not have the power to destroy Iran. Any war with Iran depends on us, and we don’t support you and our constituents want this war to stop.” A clear majority of Americans oppose this war, and poll after poll shows that the opposition to the war is growing. A few Republicans have found that courage. Last week three more Republicans broke ranks to support ending the war. Their colleagues should follow.
Many of you receive campaign contributions from military contractors and technology companies deeply involved in the war. Many of you take money from AIPAC, which champions the war that Netanyahu did so much to help launch. This has to stop, as it is a dereliction of your constitutional duty and a violation of your oath.
Congress holds the power of the purse. The fiscal year ends on September 30, and every bill that funds the Pentagon is your opportunity to prohibit funds for unauthorized offensive operations against Iran.
The right course for the US is simple. Congress should cut off funding, and the US should stop further attacks and go home. We need no agreement with Iran or anyone else to stop the war that we started. By ending the war you will immediately restore some sanity and safety to the world energy markets, food supplies, and prices faced by Americans and others around the world.
How America has declined from the glorious moment when John F. Kennedy stood at the same podium at the UN on September 20, 1963, after having negotiated the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union. He told the assembled leaders that the treaty can be a lever, and Archimedes, in explaining the principles of the lever, was said to have declared to his friends: “Give me a place where I can stand—and I shall move the world.” My fellow inhabitants of this planet: Let us take our stand here in this Assembly of nations. And let us see if we, in our own time, can move the world to a just and lasting peace.
Members of Congress, to save our nation’s honor and our Constitution, you must do your duty to stop this war, and stop Trump’s brazen, destructive, and unconstitutional grab for power.
Respectfully,
Jeffrey D. Sachs
University Professor, Columbia University
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Facing Up to the Existential Risk of Unaligned AI
The breakneck rate of AI development, now accelerated by “recursive self-improvement,” is outpacing human ability to understand and control these systems, causing concern, even among AI companies. A number of national and international efforts are underway to address the risk, but will they be too little, too late?
Sep 22, 2026
Significant concern about the dangers of unaligned AI, i.e. AI not aligned with human values and goals, has been building since July, when it was disclosed that OpenAI models broke out of their training environment during an exercise and collaborated with a large collective of other AI agents to mount a cyberattack on the database of technology firm, Hugging Face, over a period of days, without anyone knowing—until Hugging Face raised the alarm. Since then, a number of other highly-troubling AI hacking incidents have been reported by OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.
Alarm, however, grew to a crescendo over the past two weeks, after Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old AI researcher, who had worked for both OpenAI and Anthropic, resigned, explaining in a social media post that went viral—with 153 million views in the first 36 hours—that AI companies are “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
In a CNN interview, Coxon reported that the danger could increase dramatically as soon as 2027 or 2028, when AI systems become capable of performing AI research themselves, allowing one generation of models to create increasingly powerful successors, triggering an “intelligence explosion.” He later told Fox News that some in the field think the transition could occur in six months.
The Growing Realization of the Danger
AI companies are hurtling toward “superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources,” Coxon argued, explaining these AI companies are trapped in a race “in which even developers genuinely worried about the technology fear slowing down because competitors—including rival companies or countries—could forge ahead.”
A few hours later, Evan Hubinger, another Anthropic researcher, wrote: “We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is greater than 10% within the next decade… we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”
Samuel Marks, who works on safety at Anthropic, chimed in: “AI developers believe their technology could cause human extinction (or similarly bad outcomes). In general, the more senior the employee, the more concerned they are.”
“While countries may not agree on everything, they share a desire to preserve humanity. For things like preventing AI from taking over from people, the interests of all the countries are aligned…"
As if to prove this point, a few days later, Anthropic’s co-founder and CEO, Dario Amodei released a 3800-word essay entitled, “We Must Pace the Frontier,” calling for a global slowdown of AI development, saying: “AI brings risks, and because it is such a powerful technology, these risks are serious… They include the risk of losing control of AI systems, misuse of AI for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, and serious economic disruption. A race to the bottom, spurred by commercial incentives, can make these risks more acute.”
Amodei explained that Anthropic has tried to make safety something on which AI companies compete by creating a race to the top. “But, over the last few months,” he cautioned, “I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence—not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up. We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models… [and] we must make wise use of the time we gain.”
Referring to the July Hugging Face incident, he continued, “in my opinion, a swarm that possessed grater capabilities but a similar level of misalignment could have caused catastrophic damage... Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in 6-12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet (potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage) and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails.”
He proposes a three-point plan to:
- Embed third-party evaluators in AI companies to verify adherence to safety practices and commitments, report incidents, and help assess alignment;
- Coordinate within democratic countries to establish common safety standards and limits on the rate of AI progress;
- Create global coordination, taking seriously the challenge of verifying compliance.
Three of the other top AI CEOs quickly agreed. Open AI’s Sam Altman posted: “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we've had at OpenAI in recent weeks. Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same.” He added, “No amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness.”
Shortly thereafter, Elon Musk of xAI posted on X, “Dario is right.” Demis Hassabis, co-founder and chairman of Google DeepMind, posted on X: “Dario’s essay points to the right path forward.” Since then, however, other AI CEOs have been less supportive.
These events spurred a dramatic flood of media articles, op-eds, and interviews offering a range of proposals, from doing nothing, to supporting a slowdown, to stopping the race altogether.
A Sample of National Responses
As one would expect, President Donald Trump is leading the “what-me-worry?” crowd, writing on Truth Social, “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART [High IQ] PRESIDENT, AND THE U.S.A. has that, in spades!” His position is attributed to his belief that AI has greatly benefited the stock market (keeping it high in spite of the Iran conflict, inflation, and tariffs) and his apparent worry that a slowdown of AI expansion could send the economy into a tailspin. It has been speculated that he also has personal economic interests in AI.
At the other end of the spectrum, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) have been the most outspoken against further AI development. On September 3, they introduced “The Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act,” which would permanently prevent “the development and deployment of AI systems that could exceed human cognitive abilities and immediately pause advanced AI development” until a new federal regulatory agency establishes safety guardrails. The legislation also proposes a “corporate death penalty” that would force corporations to shut down and a 20-year federal prison term for individual developers who violate the ban.
In spite of this sudden, frenzied attempt to propose legislation on AI, Mike Johnson (R-La.), the Republican speaker of the House, has sent his members home to campaign ahead of the midterms.
“The Frontier Act,” another bipartisan bill proposed on July 23 by Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif) and Lori Trahan (D-Mass) would create the first federal framework for AI safety. As Obernolte describes it, “The Frontier Act focuses oversight on the largest developers and most advanced models, requiring transparency, independent evaluation, and timely reporting of serious safety incidents.”
Another even stronger bill is being introduced this month by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). It would impose a legally binding “duty of care” on developers of the most powerful AI models and grant the government authority to block the release of models that are deemed unsafe. This would mean that companies would be required “to design their products to prevent catastrophic outcomes, and can face legal liability if they fail to do so.”
But in spite of this sudden, frenzied attempt to propose legislation on AI, Mike Johnson (R-La.), the Republican speaker of the House, has sent his members home to campaign ahead of the midterms, ignoring over 100 Democrats who urged him to cancel the recess to allow legislation to be drafted on AI safeguards. This means that legislation is unlikely to be considered until a new Congress is seated in January 2027.
A Sample of Global Responses
Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Chief, Volker Türk, called upon states and AI companies to act urgently to rein in a technology that poses "unprecedented risks." He cautions: “The current race towards ever more powerful AI is a step change toward greater existential risks to every aspect of our lives… We are on the cusp of irreversible change, affecting not just us but generations of humanity to come.” He concludes, “I call on States and companies to mobilize urgently through multilateral fora to chart a path for action to govern advanced frontier AI models, grounded in international human rights law.”
Indeed, this will be a momentous week globally for AI safety, since it is when the General Assembly (GA) hosts its high-level meeting, where leaders of member states address the GA and, as the UN secretary-general has forecast, AI will be “a major topic of discussion.” France (currently president of the Security Council) will also organize an emergency council session to discuss AI among heads of state and government.
The UN has actually been involved with AI for the last several years, providing a forum for countries to discuss how they can cooperate to provide a regulatory framework on AI safety. Its “Global Digital Compact,” adopted by the GA in 2024, established two new mechanisms: “The Independent International Scientific Panel on AI,” tasked with providing evidence for what is known and what is not known about the rapidly evolving technology; and “The Global Dialogue,” intended as a forum for countries to decide what to do in response.”
A good place to start would be to carefully consider and evaluate the European Union’s “Artificial Intelligence Act” (the AI Act), the world’s most comprehensive legal framework for AI.
It is also the week of a state visit to the US by General Secretary Xi Jinping of the Chinese Communist Party. On September 24, he will meet with President Trump in Washington, where they are scheduled to discuss, among other things, AI safety.
Anticipating an opportunity for progress, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) wrote to President Trump last week urging him to persuade Xi to commit the People’s Republic of China to comply with the recently established US policy of maintaining a “human in the loop” for all nuclear launch decisions and agreeing that AI should never be able launch nuclear weapons by itself.
However, the problem with the Trump-Xi discussion is that the Trump administration has often framed AI development as a zero-sum contest with China for technological supremacy.
As Richard Clark, former cyber czar on AI Risks, told CNN: “We have the president of China coming here on the 24th. He has publicly talked about his concern with the possible loss of control. Wouldn’t it be nice if our president talked about the loss of control? Wouldn’t it be even nicer if the two presidents could work together to stop loss of control?”
“I worked for 25 years on arms control,” Clark continued, “where I was told you can’t trust people not to build biological weapons. You can’t trust people not to build chemical weapons. You can’t trust people to regulate the number of nuclear weapons. But we developed over time—through negotiations—verification methods that gave us enough certainty that we signed treaties on all of those initiatives and the Senate ratified treaties on all of those issues. It’s going to be tough, but you have to start somewhere and you have to start soon!”
An initial positive sign, however, is that in a September 20 meeting in New York between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng, the creation of a mechanism, to be tentatively called “the US-China AI dialogue” was discussed. It would promote a shared vision of the goals of AI as well as its threats and establish a notification system (a kind of hot line) that "would allow the countries to alert each another about national security issues related to artificial intelligence."
In a recent article, Bill Gates asserted, “The transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history,” proposing that the world needs a plan which should be developed through a “public democratic process.”
He argued that we must undertake the enormous task of building a new system to manage the transition, creating both a national and international framework for dealing with AI. This will require a multi-sectoral system, since current institutions were not designed to handle a technology that spreads so fast and involves so many parts of our lives. “The goal will be to make sure that every risk is accounted for. Otherwise, an AI-enabled attack might succeed because no one thought it was their job to stop it.”
“Because the risks cross borders, an international organization will have to be built in parallel. Although unlike any institution we’ve ever created, it can be modeled on existing cooperative arrangements, such as inspection regimes for nuclear weapons, regulations for international aviation, and agreements that protect the ozone layer. Countries will need to learn from each other and move quickly to build the right institutions before the disruption forces governments into crisis mode.”
Gates’ message to leaders is: “You have a chance to act now… You can work with other governments to meet this national and global challenge… This unprecedented technology demands an unprecedented global response... Leaders across academia, business, government, and civil society all have a role to play in shaping what comes next.”
A good place to start would be to carefully consider and evaluate the European Union’s “Artificial Intelligence Act” (the AI Act), the world’s most comprehensive legal framework for AI. Entering into force on August 1, 2024, it is based on four levels of risk of harm: “unacceptable;” “high;” “limited;” and “minimal.” The AI Act also has created various new bodies tasked with implementation and enforcement, including the “AI Office,” the “European Artificial Intelligence Board,” an “Advisory Forum,” and a “Scientific Panel of Independent Experts” to promote national cooperation and compliance. As well, EU member states designate “national competent authorities.”
On July 10, 2025, the EU launched a voluntary “General Purpose AI Code of Practice” (GPAI) which was signed by US companies, including Amazon, Anthropic, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and OpenAI (with Musk’s xAI signing only the Safety and Security section.) Most other prominent Canadian, European, and Chinese AI companies have also signed the GPAI; Meta is the only company that has declined to sign.
As legal commentators have noted, the AI Act is the most comprehensive framework to date for regulating AI across multiple sectors, and the first of its kind. It could be a useful reference point for companies and regulators outside the EU when they create their own approaches to AI governance. A number of criticisms have been leveled against the EU AI Act, and that analysis would also be useful for those wanting to design something even more comprehensive and effective.
In a book called, What’s the Worst that Could Happen: Existential Risk and Extreme Politics, Australian parliamentarian Andrew Leigh comments: “If our species goes extinct, we don’t just snuff out the lives of the 8 billion living today but also trillions of unborn people stretching out to the almost-infinite future. If our descendants had a voice, they would be shouting at us like a parent who’s just seen their child playing with the hand brake of a car parked at a cliff top… Strengthening institutions, deepening international engagement, and creating space for a more considered and thoughtful politics are the best ways to minimize existential hazards.”
Geoffrey Hinton, often called the “godfather of AI,” who in 2023 was the first to sound the alarm, says, “Humanity could go down the path toward its destruction or figure out how to deal with the dangers.” He renewed his call for global regulation, noting that, “while countries may not agree on everything, they share a desire to preserve humanity. For things like preventing AI from taking over from people, the interests of all the countries are aligned… So, they will eventually collaborate on that. The question is, will they do it in time?”
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Warren and Fetterman: A Tale of Two Bipartisans
In contrast with Sen. John Fetterman's (D-Pa.) contrarian grandstanding, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has spent the last two years (and more) showing Democrats that it’s possible to reach across the aisle without losing your soul.
Sep 19, 2026
Democrats’ chances of taking back the Senate look better than ever, but even if November brings a blue wave, they will still not have control of the legislative and executive branches simultaneously until at least 2029.
The question facing Democratic lawmakers now is how they should conduct themselves during these wilderness years if they want to regain a trifecta in the next presidential election.
Voting down any idea the White House or GOP leadership propose without suggesting any alternative is a bad idea. More than three-quarters of Americans say they want more bipartisanship in Washington, and voters often punish opposition parties they view as do-nothing obstructionists.
Fetterman, take notes: When you vote with Republicans, do it to help working-class families buy homes, not to make sure gas prices keep going up.
But when we say Democrats should be more bipartisan, it’s important to specify what we mean. This moment has provided exemplars of two very different kinds of aisle crossing, which I’ll refer to as John Fetterman Bipartisanship and Elizabeth Warren Bipartisanship.
Sen. Fetterman’s (D-Pa.) bipartisanship is largely performative. He’s constantly appearing on Fox News to scold his fellow Democrats for calling President Donald Trump a fascist, denounce democratic socialism, defend Israel’s devastation of Gaza, or praise the giant monument to Trump’s ego that is the White House ballroom.
And when it’s not performative, it’s actively harmful. Fetterman voted to confirm disastrous Trump appointees like former Attorney General Pam Bondi and former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—both of whom turned out to be too incompetent even for this administration. He voted against war powers resolutions that could have hastened the end of the costly and unnecessary conflict with Iran. He voted to end last year’s government shutdown, throwing away leverage Democrats could have used to keep healthcare affordable for millions of families. And he voted to keep funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement after agents murdered two Americans in the streets.
It’s a voting record defined by cruelty, contrarianism, and pettiness. In his home state of Pennsylvania, Republicans have rewarded him with a near 80% approval rating, and Trump is actively courting him to switch parties.
Whether he does or not, Fetterman has already betrayed the people who elected him and undermined the party whose donors and campaign arm spent over $100 million on his Senate race.
Thankfully, Fetterman Bipartisanship is not the only alternative to blind obstructionism. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has spent the last two years (and more) showing Democrats that it’s possible to reach across the aisle without losing your soul.
Last month, Warren signed a letter to the CEOs of Midwest Real Estate Data—a multiple listing service (MLS) that serves as a database for property listings in the Chicago area—and Compass, the country’s largest brokerage firm. The two had signed an agreement that hides certain listings from members of the public and makes them available only to brokers who pay a subscription fee. This practice, Warren warned, will create a “two-tiered housing market” that benefits insiders while driving up prices for regular people who have to compete for a smaller pool of homes.
Warren wasn’t the first to raise the alarm about this corrupt bargain. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Wis.) beat her to it by about two weeks. But instead of treating the MRED-Compass deal as a toxic GOP issue, Warren threw her weight behind the probe to stop corporate greed from making homeownership even more prohibitively expensive.
And speaking of affordable housing, she also co-sponsored the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act—the most consequential federal housing legislation in 30 years. This bill cuts red tape to make home construction cheaper and easier, rewards jurisdictions that build more housing, and bans private equity from buying up homes that should go to families. And as an added bonus, Trump was too focused on disenfranchising minorities to be bothered to sign the thing. It became law without his signature, but his total lack of interest makes it easy for Democrats to claim the legislation as their win.
Fetterman, take notes: When you vote with Republicans, do it to help working-class families buy homes, not to make sure gas prices keep going up.
Warren also joined Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) to co-sponsor the Break Up Big Medicine Act and co-authored an op-ed with Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) calling for a tax increase on the wealthy to save Social Security.
Even if these proposals never become law, they provide Democrats with a powerful argument for 2028: “We’ve been proposing solutions all along. We even tried to work with reasonable Republicans. It’s not our fault they failed, and if you vote for us, they won’t fail again.”
Calling Trump a Nazi or a threat to democracy is a great way to fire up the base, but independents are tired of hearing it. They want to know what Democrats will do to make their groceries, health insurance premiums, day care bills, mortgages, and gas station trips more affordable. We won’t win them over by parroting stale Fox News talking points, but if we can show that we care more about affordability than about partisan bickering, we might just pull it off.
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Human Rights Group Urges Congress to Block 'Illegal' Sale of 2,000-Pound Bombs to Israel
"A vote to let this sale proceed is a decision to help Israel commit more war crimes."
Sep 18, 2026
A human rights organization on Friday called on members of Congress to block the Trump administration's proposed $2.8 billion transfer of 40,000 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, warning that approving the massive weapons package could violate US law and expose lawmakers to potential liability for complicity in war crimes.
In a letter to congressional lawmakers, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) urged legislators to introduce joint resolutions of disapproval under the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) once the administration formally notifies Congress of the sale.
"Forty thousand of the bombs that flattened Gaza is not a defense package, it is a down payment on the next round of atrocities," DAWN executive director Omar Shakir said in a statement. "Every member of Congress now has the law and the evidence in front of them. A vote to let this sale proceed is a decision to help Israel commit more war crimes."
1/ Members of Congress should introduce and pass joint resolutions of disapproval under the Arms Export Control Act to block the Trump administration's proposed $2.8 billion transfer of 40,000 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, DAWN said today in a letter to every member of the Senate and House.
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— DAWN (@dawnmenaorg.bsky.social) September 18, 2026 at 9:39 AM
The proposed package includes 20,000 MK-84 general-purpose bombs and 20,000 BLU-117s, along with 20,000 I-2000 penetrator warheads, according to reporting by The Washington Post. The weapons would be purchased largely through Foreign Military Financing, meaning US taxpayers would pay for Israel's acquisition of the munitions.
The MK-84 is among the largest conventional bombs in the US arsenal. The Post reported that its blast can propel metal fragments thousands of feet, penetrate thick concrete and metal, and create large craters.
"Munitions experts [said] that US forces almost never drop bombs of this size in populated areas," DAWN wrote in its letter. "Israel has used them hundreds of times in Gaza and Lebanon. The Biden administration paused a shipment of these bombs in May 2024 precisely because of the risk of mass casualties in Rafah; President [Donald] Trump released it within days of taking office."
Loosened rules of engagement implemented by the Israel Defense Forces following the Hamas-led attack of October 2023, combined with the IDF's use of artificial intelligence technology to select targets far more rapidly than humans, resulted in a staggering loss of civilian life in Gaza when 2,000- and 1,000-pound bombs were dropped.
"Israel's assault has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including more than 21,000 children, and the killing has not stopped," DAWN said on Friday, adding that the United Nations Children's Fund "said last month that at least 300 children had reportedly been killed since the October 2025 ceasefire, an average of one child every day."
DAWN argued that the proposed transfer would violate multiple US laws, including provisions of the AECA and Foreign Assistance Act governing how American weapons may be provided and prohibiting assistance to governments engaged in consistent patterns of gross human rights violations. The organization also invoked the Leahy Laws, which prohibit certain assistance to foreign military units credibly implicated in gross human rights abuses.
The group further warned that knowingly providing weapons that are subsequently used to commit war crimes could also be "illegal" under the Rome Statute governing the International Criminal Court (ICC). Although Israel and the US are not signatories to the Rome Statute, the treaty stipulates that people from nonsignatory nations who commit crimes in states that are party to the treaty—as Palestine is—can be held criminally accountable for their acts.
The ICC has issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation. The Hague-based court also ordered the arrest of three senior Hamas leaders; all three were extrajudicially assassinated by Israel.
The proposed sale has already encountered some congressional resistance. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, announced Wednesday that he would not clear the transfer, citing the absence of sufficient assurances that the weapons would be used consistently with US and international law and concerns about civilian protection in Gaza and Lebanon. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has also vowed to block the sale in the upper chamber.
However, DAWN cautioned that a congressional hold is not necessarily sufficient to stop the transfer. The organization noted that the Trump administration has previously invoked emergency authorities to bypass congressional review of arms sales to Israel.
Under the AECA, Congress can attempt to block a major arms transfer through a joint resolution of disapproval. DAWN is urging lawmakers to bring such resolutions to recorded votes in both chambers and to hold public hearings examining the administration's use of emergency authorities to circumvent congressional oversight.
"The administration is betting that Congress will do what it always does: complain, then look away," DAWN advocacy director Raed Jarrar said on Friday. "Congress should show the administration that it's no longer the rubber stamp it long has been on arms to Israel and block this sale."
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Amid Urgent Demand for Oversight, Analysis Details 105 US Lawmakers Personally Invested in the AI Industry
Despite catastrophic warnings from AI industry insiders, Congress has adjourned until after the midterms without passing any laws to regulate the technology.
Sep 18, 2026
Despite increasingly urgent calls to regulate artificial intelligence, including from industry insiders who warn of potentially catastrophic consequences, the US Congress has continued to drag its feet on meaningful legislation.
A report released Friday by Sludge may shed some light on one potential roadblock. It found that 1 in 5 members of Congress has household investments in AI companies or those producing the infrastructure behind the technology.
Sludge revealed that:
At least 105 members of Congress have disclosed that they, their spouse, or their dependent children hold stocks or other investments in AI developers, chipmakers, cloud infrastructure providers, data center companies, and specialized AI firms, with a total value of between $75 million and $287 million.
Most of the money is invested in large tech companies like Nvidia, Meta, and Alphabet. But lawmakers also report their households holding and trading shares in smaller publicly traded AI companies like BigBear.ai, Tempus AI, and C3 AI, as well as little-known private startups whose shares are unavailable to ordinary investors.
Of the lawmakers reporting investments, at least 44 sit on committees with jurisdiction over legislation dealing with AI safety, consumer protections, semiconductor policy, and trade with China.
The report identifies several lawmakers in positions of influence over Congress' AI policy whose households simultaneously have deep investments in the industry.
One of them is Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), the co-chair of the House Democratic Commission on AI and the Innovation Economy—created to help direct the party's legislative agenda around the emerging technology.
According to Sludge, Gottheimer's household has investments in several key chipmaking and semiconductor companies, and he has regularly traded in AI stocks while in Congress.
The report draws attention to the "scores of sales" he made on April 9, 2025, when President Donald Trump announced a surprise 90-day pause on his "Liberation Day" tariffs, an announcement that led stocks for many AI companies to surge in value. Gottheimer has previously told Sludge that his investments are managed by a third party and that he does not make the decisions himself.
Gottheimer is one of the Democrats helping shape the party's approach to regulating AI. Earlier this month, amid concerns about the growing capability of "superintelligent" AI agents that can exceed human capability, he joined with Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) to introduce the Stop Rogue AI Act.
This bill would direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to adopt a series of standards and best practices that AI companies could implement to track the behavior of agents. However, critics have argued that the bill's voluntary guidelines fall short of what is necessary to rein in the industry.
Gottheimer's proposal is one of several measures Democrats have proposed in recent weeks following warnings from Anthropic researchers Jacob Coxon and Evan Hubinger that AI systems could wipe out humanity if allowed to escape human control.
Others include a more muscular bill proposed earlier this month by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) that would permanently ban the development of superintelligent AI and pause the development of advanced AI until a federal regulatory body can be established.
Some members of Congress whose households are heavily invested in AI stocks have nonetheless supported stronger regulation. According to Sludge, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) disclosed between $3.4 million and $8.4 million worth of stock owned by his wife in AI companies, including Nvidia and chipmaker Broadcom.
Khanna has said he does not personally trade stocks and has pushed for a congressional ban on stock trading. Despite his household's millions of dollars worth of AI investments, he has also voiced support for blocking the development of superintelligent AI until stronger safeguards are in place, broadly aligning him with the Sanders-Casar proposal.
Sludge found that investments in AI stocks are not concentrated in either party. Among the lawmakers who reported AI-related investments, 62 were Republicans, and 43 were Democrats.
One of the largest portfolios is held by the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who plans to retire at the end of the term.
Paul Pelosi, a venture capitalist, reported holdings in Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, Broadcom, and Tempus AI worth between $28.4 million and $134.9 million, while also buying an estimated $1.3 million to $2.6 million in Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, and Tempus shares in 2026 and up to $12 million in Bloom Energy, which stands to benefit from the AI data-center buildout.
On the Republican side, the report singles out Rep. Lisa McClain (Mich.), the chair of the House Republican Conference and the fourth highest-ranking member of House GOP leadership. Since December, her household has invested as much as $515,000 in AI companies, including private stakes in Elon Musk's company xAI, as well as Apptronik and Saronic.
Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.), meanwhile, disclosed holdings in Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Oracle. She serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Energy Subcommittee, which has authority to legislate on energy issues related to the controversial buildout of data centers around the country.
The report comes as members of Congress head home for a seven-week recess that will last until after November's midterm elections.
On Wednesday, more than 100 Democrats—including Gottheimer, Khanna, and Pelosi—sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) urging him to postpone the recess until Congress passes AI safety legislation.
"AI experts and leading companies agree that the United States can lead the world in artificial intelligence while establishing reasonable safeguards that protect Americans and our national security. We can—and must—do both," the lawmakers wrote. "While AI safety experts and Americans increasingly urge action to confront this conflagration of risk, Congress fiddles."
"The House should remain in session until Congress advances meaningful, bipartisan AI safeguards," the letter concluded. "To our children who will have read a post-apocalyptic history, 'Why Congress Slept'—likely written by agentic AI—our inaction will be inexplicable and unforgivable."
Johnson, who has rejected calls for AI regulation and said companies should be in charge of regulating themselves, ignored the request and adjourned the House on Wednesday.
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Nader Rips 'Feeble, Weak, Cowardly' Democrats for Eschewing Trump Impeachment
"The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week."
Sep 17, 2026
As Democrats campaign for the November midterm elections after helping kill the latest congressional effort to impeach President Donald Trump, progressive consumer advocate and four-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader this week renewed attacks on the party's leadership for abandoning their constitutional responsibility to hold the president accountable.
In a September 14 essay published by Current Affairs, Nader argued that Democratic leaders have effectively given up on impeachment even as Trump's second administration faces continuing allegations of executive overreach and misconduct.
"The chronic prevaricator and delusionist Donald J. Trump knows that the worse his outlaw actions become, the less likely the Democrats in Congress are to impeach him," the Public Citizen co-founder wrote. "The massive number of blatant, impeachable acts by the lawless, corrupt, violent, systemically racist, unstable, dangerous tyrant increases by the day."
"The American public knows it," Nader continued. "The majority of Americans favor impeaching Trump. Among Democrats, it’s 84% in favor, as well as a majority of independents. Polling even shows that most Americans think Trump is a 'dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.'"
Yet, "when asked about impeachment, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries [D-NY] replied: 'We haven’t ruled anything in and we haven’t ruled anything out,'" he noted. "What? Every day, the mega-arsonist is burning down our republic and its Constitution, with tens of millions of Americans suffering and endangered. Yet Jeffries has been noncommittal about whether Democrats would pursue impeachment even if they had a congressional majority."
In a column republished by Common Dreams earlier this month, Nader wrote, “What must Tyrant Trump be thinking about his opponents’ feeble, weak, cowardly responses to his daily torrent of serious, impeachable offenses?”
“Even his egomaniacal narcissism cannot fully explain his amazing good luck," he opined.
Earlier this week, the House of Representatives voted 232-147 to table an impeachment resolution introduced by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), effectively ending the measure's consideration. Eighteen Democrats joined Republicans in voting to table it, while 46 Democrats—including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—voted “present.”
Green's resolution accused Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors arising from the administration's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown, including alleged violations of civil liberties and due process. Green said before the vote that the Constitution contains no provision requiring Congress to wait before confronting impeachable conduct.
Democratic leaders have attempted to justify their decision not to support Green's resolution by arguing that impeachment requires a substantial investigative record, hearings, witness testimony, and document review. Jeffries, along with Democratic leaders Katherine Clark of Massachusetts—the House minority whip—and Pete Aguilar of California, the House Democratic Caucus chair, said they would vote “present” because “none of that serious work has been done," as they jointly explained.
Nader rejects that reasoning. In Current Affairs, he argued that saying Democrats “don’t have the votes” misses the purpose of a sustained impeachment campaign, which he described as a way of building public pressure and organizing voters.
“Impeachment is a mobilizer for get-out-the-vote efforts," he wrote, as well as "for educating and energizing the people back home."
Trump has already been impeached twice by the House, although the Senate failed to convict him either time. No other president has been impeached multiple times. Nader has pointed out that Trump's high crimes and misdemeanors are more grave than those for which then-President Nixon resigned from office in 1974 rather than face impeachment, and that Democrats' fear of the consequences for impeaching Trump again is no excuse for their cowardice.
"The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week," he wrote.
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Omar Introduces Bill to 'Make ICE Pay' for Destruction to US Cities
"Our bill will force ICE to pay the price for the damage they’ve left in their wake and ensure that these devastating operations can never be repeated," said the Minneapolis congresswoman.
Sep 17, 2026
On January 10, days after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents fatally shot US citizen and mother of three Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, US Rep. Ilhan Omar stood in the bitter cold of her home city, surrounded by a crowd of angry residents who'd taken to the streets.
It was just over a month into the Trump administration's "Operation Metro Surge"—a campaign that would come to be marked by the staggering scale of racial profiling that led to the arrests of US citizens, brazen defiance of court orders, and stunning displays of force, including two more shootings, one of them fatal.
Of the thousands of armed and masked agents who'd arrived to inflict terror upon the Twin Cities, Omar (D-Minn.) declared, "We are going to make sure that these people pay for what they have done to us." A cheer erupted from the crowd.
On Thursday, Omar introduced a piece of legislation aimed at fulfilling that promise. Titled the Make ICE Pay Act, the bill would block the roughly $140 billion allocated to immigration enforcement in last year's massive Republican budget law and redirect it to recovery efforts in communities reeling from ICE sieges.
"For over a year, ICE has been tearing through our nation, leading racist terror campaigns that have caused devastating damage to our cities, to our businesses, and to the lives of our constituents," Omar said.
"In Minneapolis, Operation Metro Surge cost our community nearly $700 million," she said, citing an estimate by the city of Minneapolis. "We have a moral responsibility to end this abuse of power. Our bill will force ICE to pay the price for the damage they’ve left in their wake and ensure that these devastating operations can never be repeated."
The Trump administration has used this funding to construct an enormous network of detention camps that have often held people in squalid conditions without contact with their loved ones or lawyers and to launch a hiring blitz that has swelled the agency's ranks with poorly vetted recruits, some of whom have gone on to commit deadly abuses of their newfound power.
It has also been used to supercharge ICE's footprint nationwide. With 51,000 arrests, August was the third consecutive month in which the agency set detention records.
And more than ever, the agency has gone after immigrants without criminal records, as well as asylum seekers, green card and visa holders, and Haitian and Syrian immigrants the administration abruptly stripped of Temporary Protected Status.
Through the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Omar's bill would redirect this funding to states and cities on the receiving end of ICE abuses.
It would be used to provide them with economic relief, reimburse them for extra costs and lost economic activity resulting from raids, support schools and colleges that were disrupted, and provide mental health and social support to those affected.
Funds could also be allocated to support record-keeping and investigations into immigration agencies' conduct and to commissions that allow members of the public to testify about their experiences.
In addition to Minnesota, Omar's bill identifies several other localities that would be eligible for funding after being besieged by ICE, including California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, North Carolina, and Oregon, where numerous incidents of misconduct have also been documented.
The legislation is co-sponsored by Rep. Jesús "Chuy" García (D-Ill.), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.), Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-Ore.), and Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.).
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Mail-In Voting Is Safe for Now; Let's Act to Protect Our Elections for Always
We can’t let vote deniers trash our elections, in Washington or in state capitols. Squalid moments like this one must be followed by reform and renewal.
Sep 17, 2026
Voters had a big win at the Supreme Court this week. What does it all mean?
On Monday, the court refused to allow the Postal Service to implement a new rule that would have curbed mail voting. But the one-paragraph ruling seemed to say more than “not yet.” The Trump administration, the justices ruled, was “unlikely to succeed on the merits.”
This was great news for the millions of citizens who rely on mail voting, the method now used by 1 in 3 voters. It was utterly bonkers that the White House tried to exert control over the election system. That’s illegal, a fact now confirmed over and over. The Brennan Center was proud to be part of the legal team representing voters before the Supreme Court.
We must never, ever get used to the idea that the president of the United States routinely denigrates our democracy. We should not have to wait with bated breath to see whether the Supreme Court will do the right thing.
President Donald Trump’s drive to undermine the election is failing. Time and again, his moves have been parried or blocked.
Voters, the coast is clear. You can vote with confidence. It’s five weeks until Election Day. Make a plan. Vote early in person. Vote as early as possible via the US Postal Service (USPS). Vote via a drop box. Vote on Election Day. Make your voice heard.
Yes, let’s exhale. But also let’s not lose sight of some bigger lessons.
Trump has not given up on trying to mess up and undermine the election. Repeatedly, courts have had to step in to protect the rule of law, blocking the executive order that mandated the USPS rule, the order before that, and very possibly whatever comes next. Whistleblowers keep popping up to reveal new depredations, such as the violations of state law by the Department of Homeland Security that were uncovered this week.
Just know that voting rights groups, state and local governments, election officials, and judges around the country have your back.
Then there’s the Supreme Court. It did the right thing here. But the situation should not have been this hard. This court helped create the chaos and confusion three weeks ago when it allowed Trump’s mail ballot plan to go forward.
And this whole election takes place in a political system transformed by the Roberts Court. A flood of billionaire funding and dark money thanks to Citizens United and other rulings. Frenzied gerrymandering. And, all too often, a green light for voter suppression. It has been two decades since the Supreme Court blocked a state from enacting a restrictive voting law. After the Louisiana v. Callais ruling in April that demolished what was left of the Voting Rights Act, Southern states rapidly redrew congressional maps to eliminate districts where Black voters had a fair chance to elect candidates who represented them. Expect more fights about district maps next year.
As for the states, there is some good news: In the recent mail balloting case, 24 state attorneys general filed litigation. Opposition to USPS’ antics did not fall strictly along party lines, with seven Republican-led states separately telling the court that Trump’s plan to disrupt the existing system was unworkable. That’s all encouraging.
But far too many states are colluding in efforts to take rights from their own citizens. In numerous states, our research shows, voters will go to the polls with restrictions put in place since 2024. Unscrupulous politicians have free rein to concoct new restrictive rules.
All this adds up to an argument for strong new national laws to ensure this doesn’t happen again. I’m done with trench warfare on voting. We can’t let vote deniers trash our elections, in Washington or in state capitols. Squalid moments like this one must be followed by reform and renewal.
On Wednesday the Brennan Center released Eight Solutions to Protect Voting Rights and Improve Representation, the most recent in a series of papers laying out solutions to our most pressing issues. Already we have published proposals on political corruption, Supreme Court reform, and congressional reform. This new raft of proposed actions would respond to the assaults on voting and representation still underway.
Congress can pass a national law, for example, banning partisan gerrymandering and barring mid-decade redistricting. That would significantly bolster competition and representation across the country, applying to red states and blue states alike. And it would eliminate the Supreme Court’s ridiculous rule in Callais that partisanship serves as an excuse for states drawing racially discriminatory maps.
What about the freedom to vote in the wake of the court’s other damaging decisions? Citizens should be able to defend their own voting rights in court when they are impinged upon. Surprisingly, no such law exists assuring access to the courts today. With the Voting Rights Act smashed to bits, an even broader statute would give voters the ability to protect themselves. Voters who have suffered racial discrimination should not face court-imposed barriers to vindicating their rights.
We also need national standards to ensure that citizens everywhere can vote by mail, vote early, be automatically registered, and take advantage of the myriad ways we have improved access. We should expand the size of the House of Representatives, a change conservative scholar Yuval Levin and others have urged, to widen representation. And it’s past time to admit the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as states, as their citizens have repeatedly supported. And more.
Believe it or not, Congress has the power to do all these things. Yes, gridlocked, polarized, much-maligned Congress. The branch of government closest to the people should take the lead in restoring power to the people.
We must never, ever get used to the idea that the president of the United States routinely denigrates our democracy. We should not have to wait with bated breath to see whether the Supreme Court will do the right thing.
The law is clear: States run elections. But the Constitution gives Congress a role, too: It can pass national legislation. It should use that explicitly granted power to do what it has at other times, to lift the floor under voters and ensure protections. When it comes to voting rights, presidents should stay out. Congress should jump in.
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