AUSTIN, Texas — Punchbowl News partnered with The Texas Tribune Thursday for the publication’s annual festival, TribFest. We hosted on-stage conversations with newsmakers dishing on Congress and the 2024 election.
House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) and MSNBC host Ali Velshi joined us for the conversations.
We also brought our signature Brown Bag briefing to the festival, where we hosted a discussion on key news issues on people’s minds.
Here are some top takeaways from those conversations:
Democrats’ chances: Aguilar expressed confidence in Democrats’ ability to win back control of the House. He rated their chances of winning as 7 on a scale of 1 to 10. Still, Aguilar cautioned the party not to take things for granted.
“Our opponent is often complacency as much as it is Republicans,” Aguilar said, noting that it will be close regardless.
Aguilar said he’s confident Democratic candidates will benefit from the renewed enthusiasm that has swept the party since Vice President Kamala Harris took over for President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. He said the Harris campaign has been communicative with Democratic members on fundraising and her policy vision, even asking to coordinate whenever members travel for campaign events.
The California Democrat also gave some candid insight into how terrified Democrats were about the prospect of Biden remaining the party’s presidential nominee.
Should Harris win, Aguilar added, Biden will be remembered as someone who “saved” the country from former President Donald Trump twice.
Government funding: Aguilar didn’t say whether Democratic leaders would encourage their members to oppose Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to pair a CR with the SAVE Act, but predicted it would fail anyway.
“I don’t think we’re going to have to work incredibly hard to have members vote against this proposal,” Aguilar said. “We know how this is going to end. This is going to end with a CR that has Democrats and Republicans on board.”
AI: Prabhakar, who serves as Biden’s top science and technology adviser, provided insight into how the Biden administration is working to mitigate the potential harms of artificial intelligence while boosting innovation.
The debate over AI policy often revolves around innovation vs. regulation, but Prabhakar said the two should go hand-in-hand.
“[AI] brings promise and peril,” Prabhakar said. “We’ve got to get it right for the American people, and that means vanishing the harms so that we can seize the benefits.”
Prabhakar also discussed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s bipartisan AI roadmap and whether Congress can effectively regulate the technology while it is advancing rapidly. Congress notoriously grinds along at much slower speed.
“Technology moves at the pace of research and development,” she said. “Policy moves at the pace of consensus. And that is by design.”
More: In a separate conversation with Punchbowl News, Gonzales predicted that Republicans would lose the House majority “because of ourselves.” Gonzales cited GOP woes on both fundraising and messaging. And Velshi joined Anna to discuss his book, “Small Acts of Courage.”
