US House to leave for campaign break without action on AI, affordability

Filed 1h ago · Via Michigan Advance · The Buffoon Desk

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Maple Leaf Rag

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: The White House · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

The U.S. House departs Wednesday for a seven-week campaign recess after fewer than two weeks in session across August and September, giving members time to campaign ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms. Speaker Mike Johnson defended the pace, pointing to a 273-page bipartisan AI task force report from December 2024, then in the same breath said lawmakers can't draft AI legislation because 'nobody in the room knows yet what that should look like,' urging companies to 'self-police' instead.

Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries countered that Republicans have done 'nothing' on grocery costs, healthcare, gas prices, deportation policy, or accountability for the administration, calling the majority's record a choice between 'lying, indifferent' or 'incompetent.' The House will total 27 session weeks this year against roughly 240 working days for a typical American employee with standard vacation time; Rep. Thomas Massie's planned impeachment vote against Defense Secretary Hegseth is also shelved by the break.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A man can't tell you the House is caught up on artificial intelligence and then explain in the very next breath that nobody in the room understands it, not without the two sentences fighting each other in public. Trusting AI companies to slow themselves down voluntarily is like trusting the fox to set his own hours at the henhouse. Whatever the seven weeks get spent on, it won't be catching up on the two hundred and some pages already sitting on somebody's desk.

Source: Read the original at Michigan Advance → Scored: Maple Leaf Rag · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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