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Less than an hour before the Senate passed the budget bill, Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.) predicted that the three-day vote-a-rama was drawing to a close, with disastrous consequences for the American people.
“The Republicans are about to vote to take away health insurance for 10 million Americans and to raise health insurance premiums for tens of millions more,” Auchincloss said, conservatively citing the Congressional Budget Office estimates. “They're going to hobble our clean energy industry. They're going to cut taxes for people who don't need tax cuts.”
Late on Monday night, Democratic senators proposed amendments for modest tax increases for people making millions, tens of millions, or even more than a billion in annual income. Republicans voted down each amendment, and Auchincloss believed that their stated reservations would disappear when it became time to capitulate.
“I've been in Congress for five years, which is enough time to know that Republicans, they huff, and they puff, and then Donald Trump blows their house down,” Auchincloss said.
“These guys all fold,” he said. “They fold like a cheap suit. I just know that they're going to do it. So the Senate's going to pass this bill.”
Less than an hour after the interview, the Senate did — barely, with Vice President J.D. Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. The revised budget bill now returns to the House for a final vote, whose passage Auchincloss believes to be all but inevitable.
But Auchincloss, a 37-year-old former Marine Corps major, doesn’t see that as a reason for fatalism.
“People reject the nihilistic, self-defeating view that we can't fight back against Trump,” he said. “It's not true. We've had a lot of successes. We've got to keep it up.”
For the congressman, one success was the defeat of a provision in the bill blocking all artificial intelligence regulation for a decade, a subject he discussed on his Substack
.“That was such a bad idea that even Republicans revolted against it in the last measure,” Auchincloss said. “So what should Democrats do? Clearly doing nothing is not an option, but over-regulating is not advised either, particularly with the fast moving technology.”
Auchincloss says that regulating AI in social media would be the best place to start.
“These social media corporations have become the wealthiest, most powerful platforms in the history of the world by monetizing the attention span of our kids, turning them into products to be sold off to the highest digital bidder,” he said. “And now Mark Zuckerberg is talking about AI chatbots meant to replace kids’ real world friends.”
As a 37-year-old father of three, Auchincloss said: “I don't want Mark Zuckerberg to design AI friends for my kids. I want my kids to have real friends. It's like this guy's like a cartoon villain in what he's describing here!”
In the full, roughly 30-minute conversation, Auchincloss and I discussed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s conflicts of interest, Trump’s use of the military in Los Angeles, and immigration agents disguising their identities while making arrests.
Throughout the interview, we keep a focus on actionable responses — whether it’s legislation, litigation or civic engagement. Watch the full video at the top of the story.
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