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On with Kara Swisher2026 Midterm Results: What Democrats’ Big Win Means for AI Regulation
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CHAPTERS
Jump to publisher timestampsChapter summaries
Midterm shocker and why Democrats think voters want faster action
The conversation opens with Kara Swisher framing Democrats’ decisive midterm win and what it could mean for governing—especially on tech and AI. Greg Casar and Sam Liccardo describe when they realized the scale of the win and why they believe voters want results, not caution.
- •Kara sets the focus: what the election outcome means for Congress and federal tech/AI legislation
- •Greg Casar describes realizing the night before that Democrats would "sweep" and celebrates Texas wins
- •Sam Liccardo says he expected a close result but not a "blue-nami"
- •Greg frames the win as a mandate for action rather than restraint
Can Democrats find bipartisan partners as Trump’s grip weakens?
Kara asks whether Republicans will work with Democrats or become more obstinate after the losses. Sam Liccardo describes how the most cooperative Republicans often come from vulnerable districts, while both guests discuss the possibility that Trump’s influence is fading.
- •Sam describes "lurking" for Republicans willing to join bills and the difficulty as moderates lose races
- •Sam argues the "spell of Trump" may be starting to break as he becomes a lame duck
- •Both point to opportunities on bread-and-butter issues even if not on everything
- •Examples of potential overlap include tariffs’ impacts and other family economic pressures
‘Beginning of the end of the Trump era’—strategy: pass popular bills anyway
Greg Casar argues the election is a turning point but also a test: Democrats must show what they can deliver. He suggests sending bills to Trump’s desk—either he signs them or vetoes popular policies that a future Democratic president can run on.
- •Greg calls the election "the beginning of the end of the Trump era"
- •Strategy: move aggressive legislation even with a hostile president
- •Greg cites a previous success where a bill banning private equity from buying single-family houses became law
- •Kara stresses voters want change and Democrats must deliver, especially on affordability
Investigations without falling into pure anti-Trump politics
Kara raises the question of retribution and oversight, citing the incoming House Oversight chair’s warning to "lawyer up." Casar and Liccardo argue investigations should focus on corruption that tangibly harms Americans, not just political score-settling.
- •Kara asks where investigations should start and who the targets should be
- •Greg says oversight should pursue corrupt actors beyond Trump—oligarchs and corporations benefiting from corruption
- •Sam urges strategic, focused investigations tied directly to everyday impacts
- •Both warn that being seen only as prosecuting Trump could erode trust among independents
AI priorities: who controls the future, jobs, and ‘AI surveillance pricing’
Kara pivots to AI legislation and asks what Congress should tackle first. Greg Casar frames AI as a power struggle—billionaires versus the public—and outlines bills on superintelligence, worker displacement incentives, and banning AI-driven personalized price discrimination.
- •Kara notes dozens of AI bills spanning jobs, safety, privacy, data centers, and accountability
- •Greg frames the core question as who controls society’s future
- •Greg describes a bill to ban developing AI that is too powerful for humans to control
- •Greg describes a worker-displacement tax concept to discourage companies from replacing jobs and getting tax breaks
- •Greg describes banning "AI surveillance pricing" that uses private data to set individualized prices
Liccardo’s urgency: AI safety, cybersecurity risks, and building regulatory capacity
Sam Liccardo says job disruption matters but the most urgent issue is AI safety, including cybersecurity, loss of control, and "agentic misalignment." He argues the federal government needs a capable, well-resourced authority to regulate and keep pace with rapidly advancing model capabilities.
- •Sam says safety risks are urgent and "terrifying"
- •He claims many employees in major AI labs share these concerns
- •He calls for accelerating safety technology to catch up to capability advances
- •He emphasizes creating or empowering a federal entity with authority, funding, and staff to regulate
The Frontier Act: audits, enforcement ‘teeth,’ and pre-release review
Kara asks about the Frontier Act’s momentum and what Democrats should demand. Casar and Liccardo call it a starting point but push for stronger independence in audits, stronger enforcement, and clearer pre-release criteria rather than opaque or arbitrary decisions.
- •Kara summarizes Frontier Act features: independent audits and issue reporting
- •Greg warns against compromising early, noting prior Republican pushes to preempt state AI safety laws
- •Greg objects to auditors being paid or hired by companies and calls for stronger power to halt dangerous models
- •Greg supports serious penalties, including criminal punishment, not just fines
- •Sam supports adding pre-release review with objective criteria and transparency
AI and China: track-two talks, verification, and who should be in the room
Kara asks what coordination with China could look like during a high-stakes AI race. Liccardo emphasizes track-two technical discussions, verification mechanisms, and reducing legal barriers to scientist-to-scientist engagement; Casar argues fatalism about racing China is an excuse and calls for humanity-first voices, including employees and critics, not only CEOs.
- •Sam says regulation is incomplete without engaging China, including on open-weight model risks
- •Sam proposes track-two scientist discussions focused on metrics, testing, evaluation, and verification
- •He says legal barriers (antitrust, national security, export controls) currently impede some conversations
- •Kara criticizes CEO-only access and asks for broader representation
- •Greg argues ‘we can sign an agreement’ and criticizes nihilistic reasoning about autonomous weapons
- •Greg highlights the role of lab employees and suggests subpoenas/hearings to force executive truth under oath
‘Referee, not regulator’: why AI governance is hard and what Congress can do
Kara asks Sam about his earlier argument that AI needs a referee, not a regulator, and how that fits with demanding safeguards. Sam explains AI’s probabilistic nature complicates traditional regulation and says expertise sits in labs, so Congress must engage industry while setting incentives and liability to create a “race to safety.”
- •Sam argues AI outputs are probabilistic, making classic regulation approaches difficult
- •He says much of the expertise is outside Washington, concentrated in AI labs
- •He supports aligning incentives so safety competes with capability advances
- •He calls the Frontier Act necessary but insufficient and says more help from industry experts is needed
Expert question: banning recursive self-improvement (RSI) and enforcement challenges
New York State Assemblymember Alex Bores asks whether Congress should ban recursive self-improvement—AI systems automating AI research. Casar says yes and calls RSI “jet fuel” toward dangerous trajectories; Liccardo also supports a ban but stresses verification and monitoring are essential so bad actors can’t evade compliance.
- •Alex Bores describes RSI and asks whether each would vote to ban it
- •Greg says yes and links RSI limits to his and Senator Sanders’ artificial superintelligence ban effort
- •Sam says he would support a ban but worries about implementation and verification
- •Sam points to work on monitoring compute usage (training vs inference) as important to enforce rules
Using hearings without ‘performative jazz hands’: subpoenas, solutions, and accountability
Kara challenges Congress to use hearings effectively rather than as spectacle. Casar and Liccardo argue hearings should gather concrete risk information, pressure CEOs to offer better solutions, and demonstrate Democrats are acting on safety, affordability, and national security—not just grandstanding.
- •Kara contrasts past tech hearings where lawmakers seemed not to understand platforms
- •Greg says hearings should gather facts on risks, timelines, and executive beliefs about proximity to danger
- •Greg argues the goal is strong laws plus CEO accountability, not performance
- •Sam says Democrats should bring concrete legislative solutions and challenge companies to improve them
- •Sam frames the message as: propose a safer alternative “or else”
AI money in politics: making billionaire funding ‘toxic’ and debating a constitutional amendment
Kara asks how Democrats can withstand tech money and billionaire influence, using Elon Musk as the emblem. Casar argues Democrats should turn that money into a political liability; Liccardo suggests the moment may support a constitutional amendment to change how campaign spending is treated under the First Amendment, while Casar adds near-term legislative options to limit large contributions.
- •Kara raises fears that Democrats might ‘forgive’ tech and still take its money
- •Greg says Texas showed a model: spotlight billionaire funding to make it a liability
- •Greg argues every dollar of billionaire spending should cost supported candidates politically
- •Sam proposes a constitutional amendment beyond undoing Citizens United to change money-and-speech doctrine
- •Greg argues Congress need not wait: proposes caps on PAC contributions and steep taxes on large political contributions
- •They discuss the filibuster as a potential obstacle in the Senate
Common ground inside the Democratic caucus: safety, jobs, and data-center rules
Kara asks where Democrats align given ideological diversity. Liccardo emphasizes shared urgency on safety, worker skill pathways, and a framework for data centers that protects communities and ratepayers while enabling grid investment; Casar says the caucus is uniting around real rules on surveillance, national security, and avoiding mass unemployment.
- •Sam says there is broad agreement on AI risk and urgency to legislate safety
- •He argues workers need real skill pathways for an AI-enabled economy
- •He says data centers are unpopular but necessary and need federal rules protecting communities and ratepayers
- •Kara notes high voter discontent and distrust of industry behavior
- •Greg says voters want real rules—not tiptoeing—and Democrats broadly agree on key problems even if they debate policy details
Regulating without ‘popping the bubble’: subsidies, bailouts, SEC oversight, and protecting people
Kara asks how to balance regulation with an economy heavily tied to the AI boom. Liccardo says it may be a bubble and argues against subsidizing it while still directing private investment toward grid expansion; Casar says tax breaks are inflating irresponsible behavior and warns against bailouts, while Liccardo adds that transparency and SEC oversight are crucial to avoid abrupt, painful corrections.
- •Sam says the AI boom likely includes a bubble and taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize it
- •He argues infrastructure needs (especially grid expansion) remain real even after corrections
- •Greg says existing tax breaks encourage irresponsible behavior and inflate the bubble
- •Greg says he and Maxine Waters filed a resolution opposing bailouts for AI companies and prioritizing workers/retirees harmed by corrections
- •Sam says SEC oversight and transparency about financing arrangements can reduce abrupt market shocks
Getting past Trump and avoiding a repeat of social media’s regulatory failure
Kara asks how to get Trump on board—or out of the way—and how to avoid repeating Congress’s failure to regulate social media. Casar points to targeting grift and federal contracting flows to AI oligarchs; Liccardo emphasizes bipartisan momentum to make legislation inevitable and proposes structural fixes like a dedicated AI committee so bills aren’t trapped in jurisdictional fights, while Casar closes with a broader call for decisive action.
- •Greg argues Democrats can use the power of the purse and investigations to expose grift and federal money flows to AI billionaires
- •Sam says building bipartisan momentum can make Trump more likely to follow political winds
- •Kara asks how to avoid repeating the slow, ineffective response to social media harms
- •Sam proposes creating an AI committee to avoid legislative ‘pinball’ across committees
- •Greg says Democrats’ biggest mistake is failing to act and urges learning from past inaction on bubbles and platforms
Publisher timestamps
- 0:00Intro
- 1:11The blue-nami
- 4:27Hope for a bipartisan future?
- 6:30The “beginning of the end of the Trump era”Read this chapter
- 11:52AI legislation: what to prioritize?
- 17:12What is the Frontier Act?
- 20:50What does coordination with China look like?
- 28:12Expert Question from NYS Assemblyman Alex Bores: Will you vote to ban RSI?
- 31:10Will Dems hold CEOs accountable?Read this chapter
- 34:10What to do about AI money in politics
- 37:05Time for a Constitutional amendment?Read this chapter
- 40:41Common ground on AI legislationRead this chapter from 40:43
- 44:00How to regulate with out popping the AI bubble
- 47:25How to get Trump on boardRead this chapter
