Political strategists on bill to fund ICE

But I imagine this allows Democrats to rewrite the ads and say, look what they've just approved?

It does. And it also allows us and Democrats to say, don't send them to the Election Day polling spots where people are going to go vote. Because I think that we have seen some reports that there has been threats to send ICE to those places on Election Day. And I think that would not be a great use of government funding. I think a lot of people would take issue with the legality of that, and I think it would be bad for our country as a whole to send ICE to that.

There was another meeting of the House Oversight Committee today regarding the Jeffrey Epstein affair. Longtime assistant to Epstein, a woman named Lesley Groff, was brought in to testify. Kendra, what do you make of the progress, or maybe the lack thereof, in this investigation, despite the fact that it's generated so much bipartisan concern? I think the overall takeaway is there's finally something that's happening, which is really important to the survivors who have asked for accountability and for justice for years and years and years. I think the issue that we are seeing is that there is still a politicization of this issue, which is wrong for them. I think they want answers, they want justice, they want transparency, but they shouldn't have members, frankly, on both sides of the aisle, using them and using this as a go back and forth. I hope that what they got from Miss Groff was honest. My guess is once we see the transcript, it will be-- we shall see. But they should bring in every single person who was in his orbit. Any enabler should be talked to by them and by what's going on in the state of New Mexico as well. Sarah, it seems as if the president at least has shaken off the attention of this or the scrutiny. Is that a fair assessment?

Yes, that's a fair assessment. And people have kind of stopped talking about it, though the Republican Party really is trying to get to the bottom of this. It may be slower than people would like, but they are trying to get this. Like, who is affected by this? Who was involved? I mean, they're attempting to. We got a little piece of information today that she said she put together phone calls with President Trump. We kind of suspected that, but she said it wasn't on a regular basis. So we knew President Trump knew Epstein. But they are attempting to get to the bottom of this, however slow it may be.

They are, but I don't know if the current attorney general is, who has closed the door on any-- Acting attorney general. Acting attorney general. Acting. He'd like to be full time attorney general. He'd like to, yes. Who has completely closed the door, though, on filing even any potential criminal charges, or looking at this from a criminal standpoint. And I think that's frankly just wrong, because we don't know what they're going to find in the House Oversight, so I think they should not be closing that door either. I want to ask you, Sarah, Spencer Pratt has now fallen out of contention for the general election in the LA mayor's race. This was a campaign that seemingly came out of nowhere and was very much generated by online content and online outrage, which clearly didn't manifest enough votes or on-the-ground support in the city of Los Angeles. But I'm curious if you think there's anything more Republicans can learn from what he was doing, either in terms of getting attention or in terms of trying to flip the script in states where maybe Republicans haven't succeeded before? Well, I think that--

Or at least in recent history. I think the members of the Main Street, especially, are really focusing on back home and the issues of back home, which is what he was focusing on. The fire, obviously, which was a total disaster for LA. So the members of Main Street, the lesson they took out of that is OK, let's do more social media and let's really focus on the issues going on in our districts versus maybe what's happening in Washington. It's been a very interesting learning lesson. I'm sorry he came in third. It would have been interesting to see him go into the runoff against the sitting mayor.

When you guys talk to clients or candidates who are running and they see the use of AI as aggressive as it was with him, are they comfortable using it in that way? Are they concerned about how it can be used to manipulate voters? I can only speak for the members of the Republican Main Street partnership. Depends on their age. If they're a little older-- OK. --they're a little more concerned about it. If they're younger, they get it. They use it a little bit better than the older ones do. The older ones kind of leave it to their staffs. There's a lot of-- a lot of growth that has to go around AI because people don't understand it and they don't understand where it's going. The leader in AI in the House is a member of Main Street, Jay Obernolte, and he's trying to educate the members, because he actually has a master's degree in AI. Oh, OK. Yeah. I do think-- They want to use it? Well, I think that it's an interesting tool. It's a smart tool. But I also think that Congress, at some point, needs to step in and figure out where is the line on regulation, because there's been none. And it's going to be an important piece of moving forward. AI, in general, we see it moving way faster than I think anybody anticipated. And so I do hope at some point Congress comes in and does something to also regulate it. I think they will. Yeah. I hope they will. All right. I agree with you.

We'll see. Kendra Barkoff Lamy, Sarah Chamberlain, thank you both. Thank you.

Good to see you on a busy Tuesday. We appreciate it.