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South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds is writing the Senate's rules on artificial intelligence while taking handouts from the Big Tech companies he's supposed to be regulating.
Updated October 15: David Rouzer skipped a UNC Wilmington forum and Russell Fry backed out of an NAACP forum six hours before it started; Tom Cotton's only agreed debate fell through. October 12: Keith Self, asked on national TV whether he would debate, called the district 'my seat.' October 10: Cliff Bentz declined four debate invitations because accepting would make his opponent look 'credible,' Jim Pillen called debates 'theater,' and Julie Fedorchak pulled out of North Dakota's public TV debate. Earlier: Jeff Hurd declined televised debate invitations and agreed to one 30-minute session before a friendly audience instead. John McGuire says he'll debate when his opponent apologizes for raising a BlackRock sale the disclosure records in his wife's retirement account. They join fourteen Republicans we have already documented ducking the one event they can't script.
Wired found outside groups — mostly a super PAC funded through Andreessen Horowitz — have spent about $600,000 backing Mike Rounds, and he's taken roughly $215,000 more straight from employees and PACs of AI labs and other tech companies. Rounds co-wrote the Senate's AI roadmap, and AI executives see him as 'a top supporter of the industry.'
In four states, in three days, four Republicans on this site said no to a debate or forum their opponent was ready to do. A Michigan Senate debate went on with an empty podium, South Dakota's public broadcaster aired its Senate debate without the senator, and a second Wisconsin governor's debate was canceled.
Robert Skjonsberg has worked for Rounds for over a decade and is a registered South Dakota lobbyist for more than a dozen clients, among them Meta and Altria. Senate rules say a staffer at his pay grade may not affiliate with a firm that sells professional services — and he is listed as a co-owner of one.
Five weeks into the boat strike campaign, the Senate voted on whether to pull U.S. forces out of a fight Congress never authorized. It failed 48-51. Fourteen Republican senators we track voted no, and thirteen of them voted no every time it came up again.
The AP and the Guardian obtained a January 2019 letter in which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked Samoa's prime minister to let his team study the country's MMR vaccines. He told senators the trip had nothing to do with vaccines. Fourteen Republicans we track voted to confirm him.
Five state Republican parties have added anti-IVF language to their platforms. In Congress, the SAFE KIDS Act would void surrogacy contracts with citizens of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — and 25 Republicans with report cards here put their names on it.
ICE plans to spend up to $20 million on gloves that deliver painful electric shocks — ten times what Susan Collins points to as the de-escalation reform that justified her vote. Here are the 201 Republicans with report cards on this site who voted for the money.
