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Saturday, September 26, 2026

‘F*ck the Consultants’: Free Advice Offered for Democrats in Need of a Position on AI

“Wild that candidates are avoiding an enormously consequential issue with broad bipartisan support among voters, for fear of unleashing attack ads from super PACs funded by a tiny handful of AI billionaires and corporations.”

Protesters during a “Stop the AI Race” demonstration calling for a slowdown in the development of advanced artificial intelligence systems outside City Hall in San Francisco, California, on September 17, 2026.
(Photo by Karl Mondon / AFP via Getty Images)

Jon Queally
Sep 18, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

A veteran aide for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has some choice advice for Democrats running for office in this year’s election, which is to ignore the guidance some of them are reportedly receiving from their political consultants on the question of regulating the artificial intelligence industry in the face of growing public concerns about runaway machine learning and the data center buildout that big tech companies are pursuing nationwide.

Warren Gunnels, who currently serves as the minority staff director for Sanders on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee in the US Senate, issued his advice in response to a Politico article published Thursday, which had the headline “Democratic advisers are warning their candidates not to go too hard at AI.”

While the reporting noted that members of the Democratic Party’s consultancy class are “privately encouraging their battleground candidates to avoid talking about AI regulations out of fear that powerful tech groups will unleash a tidal wave of spending against them” ahead of this year’s midterm election, Gunnels offered a 9-word antidote to what he considered bad political advice and a failure to recognize where most voters are on the issue.

“Nine words,” said Gunnels in his post: “Fuck the consultants, End Citizens United, Ban super PACs.” Gunnels backed up his statement with recent polling data suggesting that a strong stance on AI and data centers would likely help, not hurt, those seeking elected office.

Gunnels wasn’t the only one to react negatively.

Brendan Fischer, director of strategic investigations at the Campaign Legal Center, said it’s “wild that candidates are avoiding an enormously consequential issue with broad bipartisan support among voters, for fear of unleashing attack ads from super PACs funded by a tiny handful of AI billionaires and corporations.”

The US Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in the Citizens United case, which unleashed a tidal wave of dark money campaign spending, said Fischer, “promised unlimited political spending would mean more speech and a more robust marketplace of ideas. But instead, candidates are chilled from discussing issues voters care about for fear of angering wealthy interests capable of spending millions to defeat them.”

In July, Business Insider reported that the AI industry had already spent at least $65 million in midterm races, though other estimates have put that figure much higher. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, CEO of Space X and a major player in the AI space with his GROK model, has vowed to spend a $100 million help his preferred candidates and the Republican Party win.

At a summit on the need for robust regulation of the AI industry held earlier this week, Sanders said he had a message for leaders and executives running theses tech companies.

“My message to the AI CEO’s: If you truly care about the future of humanity,” said Sanders, “stop pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into super PACs to defeat Members of Congress and candidates who are fighting for serious guardrails on AI.”

As the debate over AI regulation has emerged as a major topic in Washington, DC, and on the campaign trail in recent weeks, a series of polls have confirmed public anxieties about the technology.

A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago released Wednesday showed that more than half of US voters (53%) are “extremely” or “very” concerned about artificial intelligence’s environmental impacts, and the poll also found broader concerns about the negative impacts of data centers, especially on local water resources and utility rates.

“Change is scary, and I think some of that is being reflected here,” said Michael Greenstone, who directs the University of Chicago institute that collaborated on the survey, of the results.

The Politico reporting, which drew Gunnel’s fiery response, also acknowledged the public sentiment, but described how consultants working on various Democratic campaigns are trying to avoid provoking the ire of deep-pocketed tech giants:
Some top Democratic candidates and their campaigns are quietly trying to avoid crossing any red lines for tech super PACs — even as it’s unclear exactly what those lines would be, after Musk and two of the biggest AI CEOs called for more regulation on the technology last week.Democrats are especially wary of Leading the Future, a pro-AI industry super PAC that spent over $25 million in primary races this year and is backed by investors and executives of OpenAI. The rival super PAC network, Public First Action, pushes for AI regulation and is funded by OpenAI’s chief competitor, Anthropic.

While the fears of being targeted by the industry cash may not be unfounded, progressives like Gunnels suggest that a willingness to take a stand against powerful AI companies is exactly the kind of fight voters want to see from party candidates.

For the Politico article, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the House, explained how AI super PACs “come out and they say that they’re concerned, that they want regulation. But then they spend huge amounts of money on defeating anybody who wants legislative regulation.”

In a social media post Thursday night, however, Jayapal backed the congressional campaign of Will Lawrence, running as a Democrat to win an open seat in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, by saying voters “need leaders who answer to their constituents, not the corporations that paid for their election.”

Following Gunnels advice that bucking the influence of corporate donors is actually a key component of a winning electoral strategy in the 2026 midterms, Jayapal said “electing fighters who don’t take corporate PAC money”—whether on the issue of AI, healthcare, housing policy, or broader concerns about economic inequality and affordability—is key for Democrats.

Amid Urgent Demand for Oversight, Analysis Details 105 US Lawmakers Personally Invested in the AI Industry

Despite catastrophic warnings from AI industry insiders, Congress has adjourned until after the midterms without passing any laws to regulate the technology.

US Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) participates in the Competing and Setting the Standards in the AI Era panel during The Hill & Valley Forum 2026 at Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium on March 24, 2026, in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Leigh Vogel/Getty Images The Hill & Valley Forum)

Stephen Prager
Sep 18, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Despite increasingly urgent calls to regulate artificial intelligence, including from industry insiders who warn of potentially catastrophic consequences, the US Congress has continued to drag its feet on meaningful legislation.

A report released Friday by Sludge may shed some light on one potential roadblock. It found that 1 in 5 members of Congress has household investments in AI companies or those producing the infrastructure behind the technology.

Sludge revealed that:
At least 105 members of Congress have disclosed that they, their spouse, or their dependent children hold stocks or other investments in AI developers, chipmakers, cloud infrastructure providers, data center companies, and specialized AI firms, with a total value of between $75 million and $287 million.

Most of the money is invested in large tech companies like Nvidia, Meta, and Alphabet. But lawmakers also report their households holding and trading shares in smaller publicly traded AI companies like BigBear.ai, Tempus AI, and C3 AI, as well as little-known private startups whose shares are unavailable to ordinary investors.

Of the lawmakers reporting investments, at least 44 sit on committees with jurisdiction over legislation dealing with AI safety, consumer protections, semiconductor policy, and trade with China.

The report identifies several lawmakers in positions of influence over Congress’ AI policy whose households simultaneously have deep investments in the industry.

One of them is Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), the co-chair of the House Democratic Commission on AI and the Innovation Economy—created to help direct the party’s legislative agenda around the emerging technology.

According to Sludge, Gottheimer’s household has investments in several key chipmaking and semiconductor companies, and he has regularly traded in AI stocks while in Congress.

The report draws attention to the “scores of sales” he made on April 9, 2025, when President Donald Trump announced a surprise 90-day pause on his “Liberation Day” tariffs, an announcement that led stocks for many AI companies to surge in value. Gottheimer has previously told Sludge that his investments are managed by a third party and that he does not make the decisions himself.

Gottheimer is one of the Democrats helping shape the party’s approach to regulating AI. Earlier this month, amid concerns about the growing capability of “superintelligent” AI agents that can exceed human capability, he joined with Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) to introduce the Stop Rogue AI Act.

This bill would direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to adopt a series of standards and best practices that AI companies could implement to track the behavior of agents. However, critics have argued that the bill’s voluntary guidelines fall short of what is necessary to rein in the industry.

Gottheimer’s proposal is one of several measures Democrats have proposed in recent weeks following warnings from Anthropic researchers Jacob Coxon and Evan Hubinger that AI systems could wipe out humanity if allowed to escape human control.

Others include a more muscular bill proposed earlier this month by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) that would permanently ban the development of superintelligent AI and pause the development of advanced AI until a federal regulatory body can be established.

Some members of Congress whose households are heavily invested in AI stocks have nonetheless supported stronger regulation. According to Sludge, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) disclosed between $3.4 million and $8.4 million worth of stock owned by his wife in AI companies, including Nvidia and chipmaker Broadcom.

Khanna has said he does not personally trade stocks and has pushed for a congressional ban on stock trading. Despite his household’s millions of dollars worth of AI investments, he has also voiced support for blocking the development of superintelligent AI until stronger safeguards are in place, broadly aligning him with the Sanders-Casar proposal.

Sludge found that investments in AI stocks are not concentrated in either party. Among the lawmakers who reported AI-related investments, 62 were Republicans, and 43 were Democrats.

One of the largest portfolios is held by the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who plans to retire at the end of the term.

Paul Pelosi, a venture capitalist, reported holdings in Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, Broadcom, and Tempus AI worth between $28.4 million and $134.9 million, while also buying an estimated $1.3 million to $2.6 million in Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, and Tempus shares in 2026 and up to $12 million in Bloom Energy, which stands to benefit from the AI data-center buildout.

On the Republican side, the report singles out Rep. Lisa McClain (Mich.), the chair of the House Republican Conference and the fourth highest-ranking member of House GOP leadership. Since December, her household has invested as much as $515,000 in AI companies, including private stakes in Elon Musk’s company xAI, as well as Apptronik and Saronic.

Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.), meanwhile, disclosed holdings in Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Oracle. She serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Energy Subcommittee, which has authority to legislate on energy issues related to the controversial buildout of data centers around the country.

The report comes as members of Congress head home for a seven-week recess that will last until after November’s midterm elections.

On Wednesday, more than 100 Democrats—including Gottheimer, Khanna, and Pelosi—sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) urging him to postpone the recess until Congress passes AI safety legislation.

“AI experts and leading companies agree that the United States can lead the world in artificial intelligence while establishing reasonable safeguards that protect Americans and our national security. We can—and must—do both,” the lawmakers wrote. “While AI safety experts and Americans increasingly urge action to confront this conflagration of risk, Congress fiddles.”

“The House should remain in session until Congress advances meaningful, bipartisan AI safeguards,” the letter concluded. “To our children who will have read a post-apocalyptic history, ‘Why Congress Slept’—likely written by agentic AI—our inaction will be inexplicable and unforgivable.”

Johnson, who has rejected calls for AI regulation and said companies should be in charge of regulating themselves, ignored the request and adjourned the House on Wednesday.

Thursday, March 19, 2026

SPACE/COSMOS

NJIT physicists trace sun’s magnetic engine, 200,000 kilometers below surface

Physicists report evidence that the solar dynamo — the magnetic engine powering the Sun’s 11-year cycles and eruptive events — operates nearly 200,000 kilometers beneath the Sun’s surface.

New Jersey Institute of Technology

Sun Layers — image:
Diagram of the Sun’s interior and outer atmosphere, showing the core, radiative and convection zones — separated by the tachocline — and surface features such as sunspots, flares, the chromosphere and corona.
view more
Credit: NASA

Every eleven years, the Sun’s magnetic field flips. Sunspots — dark, cooler regions on the Sun’s surface that mark intense magnetic activity and often trigger solar eruptions —appear at mid-latitudes and migrate toward the star’s equator in a butterfly-shape pattern before fading as the cycle resets.

While this spectacle on the star’s surface has long been visible to astronomers, where this powerful cycle begins inside the star has remained hidden — until now.

Researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) analyzed nearly three decades of solar oscillation data to trace the Sun’s interior dynamics, and have now pointed to the likely location of the star’s magnetic engine deep beneath its surface — roughly 200,000 kilometers down, about the length of stacking 16 Earths end to end.

The findings, published in Nature Scientific Reports, provide one of the clearest observational windows yet into the Sun’s magnetic engine — the solar dynamo — shedding light on hidden forces shaping space weather patterns linked to the solar cycle, not only on Earth’s nearest star but potentially on other stars across the galaxy.

“Until now, we simply hadn’t heard enough from inside the star to be certain where the Sun’s intense magnetic fields are organized,” said Krishnendu Mandal, lead author and NJIT research professor of physics. “Sunspots are the visible footprints of magnetic fields that drive space weather on the Sun’s surface, but what solar oscillation data tells us is that the actual ‘engine room’ responsible for generating them originates much deeper.”

Sounding the Sun’s Interior Across Solar Cycles

To tune into the Sun’s interior, the team bridged roughly 30 years of observations from the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) on board NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite, the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), and the ground-based Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG).

The instruments have been recording sound waves generated by turbulent plasma motions within the star every 45 to 60 seconds since the mid-1990s.

By combining these observations, researchers analyzed billions of individual measurements, creating one of the longest and most detailed records of the Sun’s internal vibrations.

“Helioseismology is still a young field … reliable observations only began in the mid-1990s when GONG first came online,” Mandal explained. “Now, with nearly three 11-year solar cycles of data, we’re finally seeing clear patterns take shape that give us a window inside the star.”

Much like seismologists studying earthquakes on Earth, the researchers analyzed sound waves rippling through the Sun — measuring shifts in the waves’ travel times through the solar interior that reveal how hot plasma inside the star moves and rotates, exposing bands of faster and slower rotation beneath the surface.

The team's analysis revealed that these migrating rotation bands in the deep solar interior form a butterfly-shaped flow pattern, mirroring the sunspot migration that later emerges at the surface.

Analyzing these flow patterns through the interior pointed the team toward a critical transition layer nearly 200,000 kilometers beneath the surface — called the tachocline.

This thin boundary separates the Sun’s turbulent outer convection zone — where plasma churns and rises — from its stable radiative interior below. Across the tachocline, the Sun’s rotation changes abruptly, generating powerful shearing flows capable of powering the Sun’s magnetic fields.

“Rotation bands originating from magnetic structural changes near the Sun's tachocline can take several years to propagate to the surface,” Mandal said. “Tracking these internal changes gives us a clearer picture of how the solar cycle unfolds.”

The revealed correlation between the flow patterns across all three instruments and the degree to which they match the surface sunspot migration shows a clear connection between dynamics in the deep solar interior and solar activity on a global scale.

“For years, we suspected the tachocline was important for the solar dynamo, but now we have clear observational evidence,” Mandal said.

Clarifying where the dynamo operates could help scientists refine models used to forecast solar activity. Powerful solar eruptions — including flares and coronal mass ejections — can disrupt satellites, communications systems, navigation signals and power grids on Earth.

“While our findings do not yet enable precise predictions of future solar cycles, they highlight the importance of including the tachocline in space weather prediction models,” Mandal said. “Many current simulations account for processes only on near-surface layers, but our results show the entire convection zone, especially the tachocline, must be considered.”

The findings may also have implications beyond the Sun.

“Many stars exhibit magnetic cycles similar to the Sun's, but the high-resolution data achievable for the Sun due to its proximity to Earth is unattainable for others,” Mandal said. “Understanding the solar dynamo gives us a framework to study magnetic activity in other stars across the galaxy.”

The team at NJIT’s Center for Computational Heliophysics, led by study co-author and NJIT Distinguished Professor Alexander Kosovichev, plans to extend the team’s analysis and numerical simulations to refine their understanding of how the dynamo evolves and drives solar activity.

“There’s still much we don’t know about how the Sun’s internal magnetism evolves,” Mandal said. “With longer datasets and better observations, we hope to track these patterns across this and future solar cycles, potentially giving us better forecasts of space weather that can affect our daily life.”

The study, Helioseismic Evidence that the Solar Dynamo Originates Near the Tachocline, was supported by funding from NASA, including a grant “Consequences Of Fields and Flows in the Interior and Exterior of the Sun” from the NASA DRIVE Science Center — a collaboration of 13 U.S. universities and research centers that includes NJIT among its contributing institutions.

DOI

10.1038/s41598-025-34336-1

Article Title

Helioseismic evidence that the solar dynamo originates near the tachocline

New model to forecast space weather on way

Aberystwyth

image:
A coronagraph image with a large solar storm detected and tracked by the software in colour.
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Credit: Aberystwyth University

New efforts to forecast space weather with greater accuracy and reliability are being led by Aberystwyth University academics.

The scientists are aiming to shed new light on the workings of the Sun’s magnetic field, particularly within its outer atmosphere, known as the corona.

A longstanding and major scientific challenge, unlocking the corona’s secrets could help predict events like solar storms and eruptions, which can disrupt satellites, power grids and global communications systems. 

By improving the depiction of the Sun’s magnetic field, the enhanced maps generated by the project will significantly boost the precision of space weather predictions - especially in pinpointing the timing of disruptive solar events that affect Earth.

Professor Huw Morgan from Aberystwyth University’s Department of Physics is leading the project.  He said:

“Current models of the Sun’s magnetic field rely solely on data from the Sun’s surface, but the corona remains a mystery in many ways.

“This project will harness data from coronagraphs - special instruments that block out the Sun’s intense light - to reveal the Sun’s outer atmosphere.  By studying patterns in this data, we will be able to adapt existing models and offer the scientific community and space weather forecasters a more accurate picture of the Sun’s magnetic field.

“This has important implications not just for scientific research, but for operational forecasting at institutions like the UK Met Office.  Improved forecasting will help infrastructure operators to act to mitigate the problems caused on Earth by solar activity.”

The project, ‘CorMag: A magnetic model of the corona with upper boundary observational constraints’ is funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

A spectacular eruption from the Sun.

Credit

Aberystwyth University

Asteroid Bennu's rugged surface baffled NASA. We finally know why

University of Arizona

Bennu sample particle — image:
Close-up of a sample particle from asteroid Bennu.
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Credit: NASA/Scott Eckley

In one of the biggest surprises of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, its target asteroid, Bennu, turned out to be a jagged, rugged world covered in large boulders, with few of the smooth patches that earlier observations from Earth-based instruments had indicated.

"When OSIRIS-REx got to Bennu in 2018, we were surprised by what we saw," said Andrew Ryan, a scientist with the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, who led the mission's sample physical and thermal analysis working group. "We expected some boulders, but we anticipated at least some large regions with smoother, finer regolith that would be easy to collect. Instead, it looked like it was all boulders, and we were scratching our heads for a while."

Particularly puzzling were observations made in 2007 by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which measured low thermal inertia, indicative of an asteroid whose surface heats up and cools down rapidly as it rotates into and out of sunlight, like a sandy beach on Earth. This was at odds with the many large boulders that OSIRIS-REx found upon arrival, which should act more like blocks of concrete, shedding heat long after the Sun has set.

Data collected by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft during its survey campaign at the asteroid suggested a possible explanation: the boulders could be much more porous than expected. Once the samples were delivered to Earth, researchers were able to investigate this further.

Ryan's team scrutinized rock particles collected from Bennu's surface using a variety of laboratory analysis techniques. In a study published in Nature Communications, the authors reported that the boulders are indeed porous enough to account for some of the observed heat loss, but not all of it. Rather, many of the rocks turned out to be riddled with extensive networks of cracks.

To test whether the cracks could be the reason for the asteroid’s surface losing heat, a team at Nagoya University in Japan analyzed Bennu sample material using lock-in thermography. This laser-based technique allows researchers to hit a tiny spot on the surface of the sample and measure how the heat diffuses through it, similar to how ripples move across a pond.

"That's when things became really interesting," Ryan said. "The thermal inertia measured in the lab samples turned out to be much higher than what the spacecraft's instruments had recorded, echoing similar findings obtained by the team of OSIRIS-REx's partner mission, JAXA's (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa-2."

To make meaningful predictions about how the material would behave in the large boulders on the asteroid, the team had to find a way to scale up the measurements obtained with the small sample particles.

Using a glove box, team members at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston sealed sample particles in air-tight containers under a protective nitrogen atmosphere, then transferred them to a lab where they could perform X-ray computed tomography, or XCT scans. Once a particle was scanned, it went back into the glove box.

"The sample goes into its own 'spacesuit,' gets a CT scan, and then comes back to its pristine environment, all without having any exposure to the terrestrial environment," said Nicole Lunning, lead OSIRIS-REx sample curator within the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science division at NASA Johnson and one of the study's co-authors. "We can image right through these airtight containers to visualize the shape and internal structure of the rock that's inside."

"X-ray computed tomography allows us to look at the inside of an object in three dimensions, without damaging it," said study co-author and NASA Johnson X-ray scientist Scott Eckley.

Once mapped in this way, a permanent three-dimensional digital archive of a sample particle's shape and interior is created, and the data are entered into a public database. Ryan's team used the X-ray CT scan data for computer simulations modeling heat flow and thermal inertia. When scaled up to boulder size, the thermal inertia results fell into agreement with what the spacecraft had measured at the asteroid.

Where scientists once expected the boulders of Bennu to be extremely porous and fluffy, perhaps even spongy, the sample analysis revealed something unexpected.

"It turns out that they're really cracked too, and that was the missing piece of the puzzle," Ryan said.

Ron Ballouz, a scientist with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and the paper's second author, said this work transforms how scientists interpret the structure of an asteroid based on its thermal properties seen from Earth.

"We can finally ground our understanding of telescope observations of the thermal properties of an asteroid through analyzing these samples from that very same asteroid," Ballouz said.

Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-026-68505-1