Senate approves $70 billion immigration enforcement bill
: Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) heads for the Senate Chamber in between votes at the U.S. Capitol on June 04, 2026 in Washington, DC. The Senate began a marathon session of amendment votes on the $70 billion immigration enforcement bill. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Senate voted early Friday morning to approve a $70 billion immigration enforcement package that includes nothing to rein in the “anti-weaponization” fund by a vote of 52-47.
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican to join all Democrats in voting against the bill. All other Senate Republicans voted for it, giving the legislation enough support to be narrowly approved. Republicans applauded as the bill was gaveled down early this morning.
The bill now heads to House of Representatives, which is not expected to take it up for consideration until next week.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FLA) appears for a hearing of the House Ethics Committee on Capitol Hill on March 26, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Florida Democrat Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigned from Congress on Tuesday afternoon, just before she was to face a House Ethics Committee sanction hearing.
The committee was set to hold a rare public hearing to determine what sanction would be appropriate for it to recommend to the full House against Cherfilus-McCormick.
Last month, Cherfilus-McCormick was found guilty of 25 House ethics violations, including acceptance of improper campaign contributions and commingling of campaign and personal funds. The congresswoman was indicted in November 2025 by a federal grand jury on charges of stealing $5 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds, which she is accused of laundering to support her successful 2021 congressional campaign.
Cherfilus-McCormick has denied wrongdoing, excusing the allegations as an accounting error.
In her resignation announcement, the congresswoman called the process a “witch hunt.”
“By going forward with this process while a criminal indictment is pending, the Committee prevented me from defending myself,” she said. “I simply cannot stand by and allow my due process rights to be trampled on, and my good name to be tarnished.”
Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest read out loud the congresswoman’s resignation letter after the committee briefly convened and said the committee had lost jurisdiction over Cherfilus-McCormick with her resignation.
“I will tell you that the committee has worked diligently to investigate this matter, that this was not a rush to judgment, as some would claim, that this was a very deliberate process to gather information into allegations that were extremely serious and extremely complicated,” Guest said.
Ranking Democrat Mark DeSaulnier told the committee, “Nobody’s happy. I don’t think any of us are happy at what we’ve gone through, but I am extremely proud of being associated with all of you.”
She is the third member of the House to resign in a week, following Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas and Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, who were accused of sexual misconduct and were about to face efforts by their colleagues to have them expelled.
Expelling a member of the House is a rare occurrence. A two-thirds majority is required to remove a member.
Only six House members in U.S. history have been expelled from the lower chamber. Former New York Republican Rep. George Santos was the most recent lawmaker expelled from the House in 2023.
The committee could have recommended a range of sanctions, including expulsion, censure, reprimand, fine — and even denial or limitation of any right, according to House rules. The House may punish its members and may expel its members by a two-thirds vote, according to Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution.
The sanction recommendation against Cherfilus-McCormick was expected to be announced in writing after the hearing. Afterward, the panel was to break into executive session to conclude its deliberations and reach a judgment.
Before Cherfilus-McCormick announced her resignation, Florida Republican Rep. Greg Steube said he would move to force a vote to try to expel the congresswoman following the sanction hearing. Steube was expected to make the expulsion resolution privileged, which required Speaker Mike Johnson to hold a vote on the matter within two legislative days.
The speaker signaled last week that expelling Cherfilus-McCormick over her alleged crimes would be “appropriate.”
Though he initially insisted that Democrats would not help Republicans expel Cherfilus-McCormick, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on Monday that Democrats would convene a caucus meeting to determine how they’ll handle the the bipartisan Ethics panel’s recommendations.
After her resignation, Steube called on the Department of Justice to put Cherfilus-McCormick in prison.
“This is a victory for our institution and the great state of Florida,” Steube wrote on X. “Thank you to everyone who stayed involved and kept the pressure on. Now it’s on the DOJ to put her in prison.”
The Open AI logo, which represents the American-based artificial intelligence (AI) research organization known for releasing the generative chatbot language model AI ChatGPT and initiating the AI spring, is being displayed at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on February 28, 2024. (Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Millions of dollars tied to artificial intelligence are pouring into the 2026 midterms.
Interest groups funded in part by AI industry leaders are split on how the government should oversee AI — and that’s already having an impact on political ads, some experts told ABC News.
“It’s sort of an open question as to what regulation is going to look like,” University of Rochester professor David Primo told ABC News. “The stakes are really high because once a regulatory system gets entrenched, it’s really hard to change it.”
An AI-related political group, Innovation Council Action, tied to two of President Donald Trump’s advisors, announced on Sunday that it would spend at least $100 million, The New York Times reported.
The donations associated with the AI sector go beyond party lines. Federal Election Commission filings show that key industry players are pouring money into committees supporting both Democrats and Republicans, with certain groups criticizing candidates who have expressed support for new AI-related laws and others doing the opposite.
“Companies have always tried to shape regulations, and they’ve always tried to shape them in their favor. What we’re seeing now, though, is that the big companies are not united,” Primo said.
With AI’s presence being increasingly felt, some politicians are calling on their colleagues not to accept money from the burgeoning industry.
“Their money will end up being toxic anyway,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., posted on social media. “People are catching on.”
1 industry, different political priorities
In February, Anthropic, the developer of Claude AI, announced it would give $20 million to an organization called Public First Action, explaining that it agreed with most Americans that not enough was being done to regulate AI and that the technology comes with “considerable risks.”
Public First Action spokesperson Anthony Rivera-Rodriguez said that they have already run advertisements thanking Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill., Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Rep. Josh Gottheimer D-N.J., for their AI records.
Gottheimer introduced a bill in February that would provide tax credits for companies training workers on AI development.
It is not yet clear who else has contributed to Public First Action, which describes itself as a “pro-regulation” group.
“Public First Action doesn’t disclose its donors,” Rivera-Rodriguez told ABC News. “To date, the project has raised around $50 million. The aligned super PACs will publicly disclose their contributors in their upcoming FEC reports.”
One of Anthropic’s main competitors, ChatGPT owner OpenAI, has voiced support for nationwide “common-sense rules of the road,” but has cautioned that the U.S. should not fall behind other countries.
In an economic blueprint released last year, OpenAI compared AI’s ascent to the rise of the car, pointing out that while the motor vehicle “industry’s growth was stunted by regulation” in the United Kingdom, the U.S. “took a very different approach,” causing the American automobile sector to grow.
FEC disclosures show that OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and his wife each contributed $12.5 million to a group called Leading the Future, which describes itself as supporting candidates who “champion policies that harness the economic benefits of AI and reject attempts to hinder American innovation.”
Committees with links to Leading the Future have already made millions worth of contributions, filings indicate.
One group spent more than $500,000 each in support of North Carolina Republican House candidate Laurie Buckhout and Texas Republican House candidate Jessica Steinmann. The same committee spent more than $700,000 supporting Texas Republican House candidate Chris Gober.
Buckhout, Steinmann and Gober each won their March primaries. All three candidates include similar statements on their websites, mentioning that China cannot overcome the U.S. in the AI race.
Millions spent in Manhattan alone
Nowhere is the role of AI more front and center than in New York’s 12th Congressional District.
Numerous Democrats are running in this Manhattan race, but Assemblyman and former Palantir employee Alex Bores, who co-sponsored New York’s Responsible AI Safety and Education Act, is the candidate who has largely had AI’s focus.
Bores’ website says that he hopes to hold large AI companies accountable and would work to create national safety and privacy requirements.
A PAC associated with Anthropic-supported Public First Action is supporting Bores, Rivera-Rodriguez confirmed. Leading the Future is not.
“Alex Bores is a hypocrite pushing policies that would undermine America’s ability to lead the world in AI innovation and job creation,” Leading the Future spokesperson Jessie Hunt told ABC News.
As of March 16, a super PAC tied to Leading the Future had already spent more than $2.2 million opposing Bores, FEC filings show.
“There’s a few Trump megadonors that made billions of dollars from AI that don’t think there should be any regulation of AI whatsoever,” Bores told ABC News following a recent forum.
With so much AI-related money flowing into races like NY-12 around the country, Primo said these funds are not being spent secretly or for bribery. Instead, the cash is being used to convince voters of who they should elect.
“This might actually be democracy functioning really well,” he said.
Reverend Al Sharpton, founder and president of the National Action Network, left, and former US Vice President Kamala Harris during the National Action Network (NAN) 35th Anniversary Convention in New York, US, on Friday, April 10, 2026. (Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Former Vice President Kamala Harris kept the door open on a possible third presidential run, saying that she’s “thinking about it,” eliciting cheers from a majority of the crowd at the National Action Network Convention on Friday.
“Listen, I might, I might. I’m thinking about it, I’m thinking about it,” Harris responded when Rev. Al Sharpton, during their chat at the New York City convention he hosts, flatly asked her if she’s planning to run again.
Harris, who said she has spent the last year traveling parts of the country, said that the status quo in government and politics is not working.
“I’ve been traveling the country the last year, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the South and many other places, and the one thing I’m really clear about, also, is the status quo is not working, and hasn’t been working for a lot of people for a long time, and part of the issue is the need to get rid of some of the bureaucracy in government and to understand that the people want — they don’t want process, they want progress. And that’s the work that needs to be done,” Harris said.
During her discussion with Sharpton, Harris was met with different chants during her remarks, including “run again.”
The National Action Network Convention is expected to be the biggest gathering of possible Democratic 2028 presidential hopefuls with appearances by former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Sen. Mark Kelly and Rep. Ro Khanna.
Nearly all of the hopefuls have either expressed interest or have not shut down the idea about running for president.
So far, many potential presidential candidates have discussed the Iran war as they have chatted with Sharpton during the four-day convention — including Harris.
On Friday, she rebuked Trump’s handling of the Iran war and said that he has deteriorated America’s relationship with foreign allies, leading the country to lose its global standing.
“Let us understand, first of all, this president is the first president of the United States since World War II who does not believe in the alliances that we have with friendly nations, does not believe in the strength of them, the recognition of the history with them, and the importance that that relationship bears on our standing around the world, our influence around the world, not to mention our national security,” Harris said.
Harris said that under Trump’s second term, America is losing its global influence, and it will take “serious” work to regain it.
As Trump has maintained that the U.S. “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program last June, Harris seemed to say that the war in Iran is evidence that it did not actually happen.
“The man said he got rid of their nuclear arsenal. ‘Obliterated’ it he said, you know how he likes to use those kind of words, ‘obliterated’ it, which is not an ambiguous term — that means you took it out,” Harris said. “Well, evidently he didn’t do that.”
Harris is set to take part in fundraisers for Democrats across the South this spring, turning her focus to helping the party win next fall during the midterm elections as her book tour winds down.
Her April schedule includes fundraisers for the North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia Democratic parties, and remarks at the Arkansas Democratic Party’s annual dinner.
