Opinion | Why Was It So Hard for Nikki Haley to Say ‘Slavery’? History Has the Answer

In William Faulkner’s novel, Sartoris, someone asks the title character, Colonel John Sartoris, why he had fought for the Confederacy so many decades before. “Damned if I ever did know,” replied the aging veteran, now a pillar of his community in fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi.

Of course, we know why Colonel Sartoris raised arms against the United States. So does anyone with a high school diploma — assuming they used up-to-date textbooks. And so did Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, who in 1861 famously asserted that the “cornerstone” of the new Southern nation rested “upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

All of which makes it disappointing, though not surprising, that at this late date — almost 160 years after the Civil War — Nikki Haley, a leading contender for the GOP presidential nomination, shares Colonel Sartoris’ selective amnesia on the topic. When asked a softball question this week about the causes of the Civil War, Haley, a former South Carolina governor, flubbed the answer, calling it a “difficult” question and mumbling on about “basically how government was going to run — the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”

This morning, Haley qualified the comment on a radio show called “The Pulse of New Hampshire,” and followed the clean-up job with a press release, stating: “Of course the Civil War was about slavery. We know that. That’s unquestioned, always the case. We know the Civil War was about slavery. But it was also more than that. It was about the freedoms of every individual. It was about the role of government.”

But as Haley must know — after all, as governor of South Carolina, she presided over the removal of Confederate flags from the Statehouse— many Americans do question the fundamental fact that slavery precipitated the Civil War, and her equivocation played into a long-standing agenda to rewrite American history. Haley was effectively parroting the Lost Cause mythology, a revisionist school of thought born in the war’s immediate aftermath, which whitewashed the Confederacy’s cornerstone interest in raising arms to preserve slavery. Instead, a generation of Lost Cause mythologists chalked the war up to a battle over political abstractions like states’ rights.

With red states doing battle with American history, seeking to erase the legacy of violence and inequality that counterbalance the great good also inherent in our national story, it’s worth revisiting the rise of the Lost Cause, not just to remember how damaging it was, but to confront just how damaging it still is.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, the work of interpreting the rebellion fell to a small group of unreconstructed rebels. The pioneers of Confederate revisionism included wealthy and influential veterans of the Confederacy like Jubal Early, B. T. Johnson, Fitz Lee and W. P. Johnson, who helped formulate the Lost Cause myth that would take hold by the 1880s.

The narrative strains were simple. They painted a picture of Southern chivalry — mint juleps, magnolias and moonlight — that stood in sharp contrast with the North, a region marked by avarice, grinding capitalism and poverty. The rebellion, by this rendering, had been a legal response to the North’s assault on states’ rights — not a violent insurrection to preserve chattel slavery. Even Confederate veterans like Hunter McGuire knew that to admit the war had been about slavery would “hold us degraded rather than worthy of honor … our children, instead of revering their fathers will be secretly, if not openly, ashamed.”

The myth gained steamed by the end of the century, largely because of the work of organizations like the United Confederate Veterans (UCV), the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), groups that offered a compelling story that people could wrap their minds around — including many Northerners, who were eager to put the war behind them. Because the Lost Cause emphasized heroism and honor over slavery, it venerated military figures like Robert E. Lee and swept politicians like Jefferson Davis under the rug. So it was that in May 1890 over 100,000 citizens gathered in Richmond for the dedication of a statue of Lee.

The decade saw hundreds of towns across the former Confederacy raise similar monuments to their heroes and war dead. These marble and steel memorials were often planted in town squares and by county courthouses to help sanitize not only Confederate memory but the new Jim Crow order. After all, if secession had been a noble thing, so was the separation of the races.

The signs of revisionism ranged from subtle to clear. During the war, for instance, Confederate soldiers had keenly embraced the term “reb,” but the new gatekeepers of Southern memory abandoned the term. “Was your father a Rebel and a Traitor?” asked a typical leaflet. “Did he fight in the service of the Confederacy for the purpose of defeating the Union, or was he a Patriot, fighting for the liberties granted him under the Constitution, in defense of his native land, and for a cause he knew to be right?” Equally important was figuring out what to even call the war. It couldn’t be the “Civil War,” which sounded too revolutionary. It couldn’t be “the War of Rebellion” which smacked of treason. In the late 1880s, the UCV and UDC approved resolutions designating the conflict that killed 750,000 Americans the “War Between the States.” The term stuck for generations to come.

It wasn’t just Southerners who suffered willful memory loss in these years. Jaded by the experience of Reconstruction and in the thrall of rising scientific racism, many Northerners were equally eager to remember the war as a brothers’ quarrel over politics rather than a struggle over slavery and Black rights. The jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who began the war as a committed abolitionist, later erased the roots of the conflict and celebrated the battlefield valor of both Union and Confederate troops. “The faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty,” he said, “in a cause which he little understands, in a plan of campaign of which he has little notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use.”

Of course, historians agree that most Union troops did know why they were fighting. So did Holmes. But years after the fact, he was willing to forget. As were tens of thousands of veterans who attended Blue and Gray reunions well into the 20th century, including a massive camp gathering of 25,000 people who gathered at Crawfish Springs, Georgia, in 1889, near the Chickamauga Battlefield, for a picnic and public speeches. These mass spectacles helped Yankees and Confederates rewrite the history of the 1850s and 1860s, ostensibly in the service of national reunion and regeneration, but also in a way that fundamentally reinforced the emerging culture and politics of Jim Crow.

The Lost Cause mythology was more than bad history. It provided the intellectual justification for Jim Crow — not just in the former Confederacy, but everywhere systemic racism denied Black citizens equal citizenship and economic rights. Its dismantling began only in the 1960s when historians inspired by the modern Civil Rights Movement revisited the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction, adopting the views of earlier Black scholars like W.E.B. DuBois and John Hope Franklin, who always knew what the war was about and had shined a spotlight on the agency of Black and white actors alike.

That’s why the recent retreat to Lost Cause mythos is troubling. One would think that a Republican candidate for the presidency might be proud of the party’s roots as a firmly antislavery organization that dismantled the “Peculiar Institution” and fomented a critical constitutional revolution during Reconstruction — one that truly made the country more free.

With GOP presidential candidates waffling on the Civil War, rejecting history curricula in their states and launching political fusillades against “woke” culture, it remains for the rest of us to reaffirm the wisdom of Frederick Douglass, who in the last years of his life stated: “Death has no power to change moral qualities. What was bad before the war, and during the war, has not been made good since the war. … Whatever else I may forget, I shall never forget the difference between those who fought for liberty and those who fought for slavery.”

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Court locks in Georgia's new map that draws Rep. Lucy McBath out of her district

A federal judge on Thursday approved a new congressional map in Georgia, which maintains the overall partisan split of the state’s congressional delegation. It also imperils Rep. Lucy McBath, who was drawn out of her congressional district.

District Judge Steve C. Jones, an appointee of President Barack Obama, signed off on lines drawn by the GOP-controlled legislature earlier this month. Jones had previously tossed the lines used in the 2022 elections for violating the Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of Black voters in the state, ordering the state to draw more districts where Black voters can elect candidates of their choosing.

Both the map used in the 2022 elections and the one approved by Jones on Thursday would ultimately result in the same partisan split: Republicans are favored to hold nine seats and Democrats five.

The new map includes five congressional districts where Black voters made up a majority or near-majority, up from the previous map’s four, creating a new majority Black district to the west of Atlanta.

But McBath’s former district, to the city’s northeast, was not a majority Black district. Georgia Republicans dismantled her “coalition district,” (which created a majority-minority district through a combination of Black, Latino and Asian voters), to create the new majority Black district.

Democrats contended the Republicans' efforts to redraw the map by dismantling that coalition district also violated the Voting Rights Act and didn’t comply with the court’s orders, and urged the court to block it. Jones declined to do so on Thursday.

“The Court finds that the General Assembly fully complied with this Court’s order requiring the creation of a majority-Black congressional district,” he wrote in his order. Notably, Jones did not rule on if the elimination of the coalition district violated the Voting Rights Act — but wrote that if Democrats wanted to bring that claim, it would be “better suited for a separate case.”

Democrats will almost assuredly pursue that separate claim, either on appeal or in a distinct lawsuit. But Jones’ decision Thursday means the new maps will likely be used for at least the 2024 elections in the state.

Many in the state expect McBath, who is Black, to run in the new district to Atlanta’s west. In an interview with POLITICO earlier in the month, McBath suggested she would still run again regardless of what the final map looked like.

“My focus and my direction will not change. We will serve any constituents I am given, in the same way we always have: putting their needs first,” McBath said at the time.

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Herb Kohl, formerly senator from Wisconsin and owner of NBA's Milwaukee Bucks, has died. He was 88.

Herb Kohl, a former Democratic U.S. senator from Wisconsin and former owner of the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team, has died. He was 88.

His death Wednesday was announced by Herb Kohl Philanthropies, which did not give a cause but said he died after a brief illness.

Kohl was a popular figure in Wisconsin, purchasing the Bucks to keep them from leaving town, and spending generously from his fortune on civic and educational causes throughout the state. He also used his money to fund his Senate races, allowing to him to portray himself as “nobody’s senator but yours.”

In the Senate, a body renowned for egos, Kohl was an unusual figure. He was quiet and not one to seek credit, yet effective on issues important to the state, especially dairy policy. He was one of the richest members of the Senate, and the Senate’s only professional sports team owner.

Kohl was born in Milwaukee, where he was a childhood friend of Bud Selig, who went on to become commissioner of the MLB. The two roomed together at the University of Wisconsin and remained friends in adulthood.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1956, Kohl went on to earn a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard University in 1958, and he served in the Army Reserve from 1958-64. He helped grow the family-owned business, Kohl’s grocery and department stores, and served as company president in the 1970s. The corporation was sold in 1979.

Kohl also got into Wisconsin politics in the 1970s, serving as chair of the state Democratic Party from 1975 to 1977.

In 1985, Kohl bought the Bucks for $18 million.

“I am pleased, happy and delighted,” he said at a news conference. “The Milwaukee Bucks are in Milwaukee and they are going to stay in Milwaukee.”

He later remarked: “The opportunity I was given to purchase and to keep the team here in Milwaukee is one of the most unique and fortunate experiences I’ve ever enjoyed.”

The team was in the middle of its sixth straight winning season when Kohl bought it, and it went on to post winning records in the first six full seasons with Kohl as owner, before stumbling through most of the 1990s. The team improved in the late ’90s and early 2000s. In 2006, Kohl, owner of the small-market Bucks, was one of eight league owners to ask NBA commissioner David Stern to implement revenue sharing.

Kohl’s civic commitments extended well beyond keeping professional basketball in Wisconsin. He donated $25 million to the University of Wisconsin to help fund construction of the Kohl Center, home to the school’s basketball and hockey teams. It was the single largest private donation in university history.

“I was very happy to be in a position to help build a first-rate, state-of-the-art sports arena,” Kohl once said. “I think it cements the university’s reputation as one of the premier athletic programs in the Big Ten and the country.”

He also used his own money to fund the Herb Kohl Educational Foundation, which donates money for scholarships and fellowships to students, teachers and schools in Wisconsin.

In 1988, Kohl decided to run for the Senate, following the announcement that Sen. William Proxmire was retiring, and defeated then-state Sen. Susan Engeleiter, the Republican candidate. He won reelection in 1994, 2000 and 2006. His considerable fortune helped scare away the Republican Party from mounting a serious challenge in 2006.

Kohl never accepted a pay raise in the Senate; he drew a salary of $89,500 every year, the same pay he got when he entered the Senate in 1989, returning the rest to the Treasury Department.

In the Senate, Kohl tended to home state interests. He opposed the Northeast Dairy Compact, a program opposed by Midwestern dairy farmers, and helped prevent it from being renewed in Congress. Kohl was instrumental in coming up with a replacement program, the Milk Income Loss Contract, which paid dairy farmers cash when prices fell below a certain level; the program especially helped Wisconsin dairy farmers.

As the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations agriculture subcommittee, which controls the budget of the Department of Agriculture, Kohl had a strong say on farm policy. He was also the top Democrat on the Senate Aging Committee and the Judiciary antitrust subcommittee. Kohl served as chair of all three panels when Democrats were in the majority.

Kohl didn’t mind doing things in the Senate without much credit. As Congress became more and more partisan, the diminutive Kohl almost seemed to be a throwback to another era.

“I am a person who does not believe in invective,” he once said. “I never go out and look to grab the mike or go in front of the TV camera. When I go to work everyday, I check my ego at the door.”

Kohl’s moderate temperament was matched by his voting record.

In 2001, he was one of just a dozen Democratic senators to vote for President George W. Bush’s tax cuts, but he voted against the president’s tax cuts in 2003. He also voted to authorize military force against Iraq in 2002.

Kohl, who never married, said that being single gave him time to balance the demands of life as a senator and owner. A sign on his Senate office desk said: “The Bucks Stop Here.”

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Mayor Adams announces executive order aimed at restricting Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's migrant busing

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams issued an executive order Wednesday to restrict the flow of migrant charter buses sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to New York City.

Adams said the order mandates any buses carrying migrants arrive in the city only between 8:30 a.m. and noon on weekdays. The buses’ arrival must also be announced 32 hours in advance, he said. The order specifically applies to buses contracted by the state of Texas — whose governor Adams routinely blames for sending asylum seekers into the five boroughs.

The announcement came during a joint briefing with the mayors of Chicago and Denver. The three cities have formed a coalition to press the White House and federal government for more migrant aid as each metropolis grapples with the economic and governmental burden of housing, feeding and educating tens of thousands of migrants.

Adams administration officials said Tuesday that the city is receiving nearly 4,000 migrants each week. In total, more than 161,000 migrants have entered New York City since the crisis began in 2022, and 68,000 remain in the city’s care.

"I'm proud to be here with my fellow mayors to call on the federal government to do their part with one voice and to tell Texas Governor Abbott to stop the games and use of migrants as potential as political pawns,” Adams said during the Wednesday announcement. “We cannot allow buses with people needing our help to arrive without warning at any hour of day and night."

"This not only prevents us from providing assistance in an orderly way, it puts those who have already suffered so much in danger," he added.

The executive order came the same day five buses arrived in New York City at around 1 a.m., forcing officials to scramble as they received the migrants who had begun their journey with a chartered flight from El Paso. Last week, a record 14 buses arrived from Texas in a single night, Adams said.

Adams said violating his order would result in a misdemeanor punishable by fines or the impounding of charter buses. He also raised the possibility his administration would file lawsuits against violators.

Adams is not the first mayor of the coalition to attempt to restrict the arrival of migrants via chartered buses. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson devised a similar order in November, and has already issued at least 96 citations to bus companies and impounded at least one bus. But bus companies were able to circumvent the Chicago order by dropping off migrants in far-flung suburbs.

It was unclear if Mayor Adams will try to proactively prevent the same from happening in New York.

While both Adams and Johnson have referred to Abbott’s transporting of migrants as “cruel,” New York City has also paid to transport asylum seekers to destinations outside the city. Between March and November, the city said it spent about $4.6 million to purchase more than 19,300 plane tickets for migrants seeking travel to other cities.

In both Texas and New York, local governments say the migrants are traveling willingly.

In response to a question about how Abbott's actions differ from those of Adams, who is offering some migrants tickets out of the city, a spokesperson responded: "We are not chartering planes or busses and shipping migrants to other cities with little access to food, water and bathrooms on the journey. Our reticketing process is dedicated to getting migrants where they want to go."

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House Ethics launches investigation into Florida Democrat

MIAMI — The House Ethics Committee announced Wednesday that it’s investigating Florida Democrat Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick over complaints that she may have violated campaign finance laws, failed to submit required disclosures and carried out improper hiring practices.

The campaign finance complaint is tied to Cherfilus-McCormick’s special election in 2022 and her reelection campaign that same year, per an official announcement about the investigation.

The progressive Florida lawmaker was elected to Congress when a seat became vacant after the 2021 death of Rep. Alcee Hastings, 84, who was first elected to the House in 1992. She’d previously unsuccessfully challenged Hastings in 2018 and 2020.

The Ethics Committee voted unanimously to investigate the allegations after getting a referral from the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent agency that investigates misconduct complaints.

It hasn’t yet been determined whether Cherfilus-McCormick did anything wrong, and the precise details of the allegations may never become public.

“As the Ethics Committee said in its statement, the mere fact of establishing an investigative subcommittee does not itself indicate that any violation occurred,” said her spokesperson, Jonathan Levin. “Regardless, the Congresswoman takes these matters seriously and is working to resolve them.”

The other allegations cited in Wednesday's announcement include having a person who wasn’t hired by her office handle official work and failing to “properly disclose required information on statements.”

The congressmember also has used funds from her office to run ads — which is allowed but is rare and could blur ethics lines, per Inside Elections.

Anyone is allowed to levy a complaint to the Office of Congressional Ethics, and investigators generally make their findings public only if they determine wrongdoing occurred.

The Office of Congressional Ethics doesn’t have any disciplinary power — that job would instead fall to the lawmaker-led Ethics Committee, only after it's done conducting its own investigation and if it determines ethics laws have been flouted.

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Israeli military says Gaza ground offensive has expanded into urban refugee camps

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli forces on Tuesday expanded their ground offensive into urban refugee camps in central Gaza after bombarding the crowded Palestinian communities and ordering residents to evacuate. Gaza’s main telecom provider announced another “complete interruption” of services in the besieged territory.

The military’s announcement of the new battle zone threatens further destruction in a war that Israel says will last for “many months” as it vows to crush the ruling Hamas militant group after its Oct. 7 attack. Israeli forces have been engaged in heavy urban fighting in northern Gaza and the southern city of Khan Younis, driving Palestinians into ever-smaller areas in search of refuge.

The U.S. said Israel’s minister for strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, was meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Despite U.S. calls for Israel to curb civilian casualties and international pressure for a cease-fire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military was deepening the fighting.

“We say to the Hamas terrorists: We see you and we will get to you,” Netanyahu said.

Israel’s offensive is one of the most devastating military campaigns in recent history. More than 20,900 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, have been killed, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, whose count doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants. The agency said 240 people were killed over the past 24 hours.

The U.N. human rights office said the continued bombardment of middle Gaza had claimed more than 100 Palestinian lives since Christmas Eve. The office noted that Israel had ordered some residents to move there.

Israel said it would no longer grant automatic visas to U.N. employees and accused the world body of being “complicit partners” in Hamas’ tactics. Government spokesman Eylon Levy said Israel would consider visa requests case by case. That could further limit aid efforts in Gaza.

Residents of central Gaza described shelling and airstrikes shaking the Nuseirat, Maghazi and Bureij camps. The built-up towns hold Palestinians driven from their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 war, along with their descendants.

“The bombing was very intense,” Radwan Abu Sheitta said by phone from Bureij.

The Israeli military ordered residents to evacuate a belt of territory the width of central Gaza, urging them to move to nearby Deir al-Balah. The U.N. humanitarian office said the area ordered evacuated was home to nearly 90,000 people before the war and now shelters more than 61,000 displaced people, mostly from the north.

The military later said it was operating in Bureij and asserted that it had located a Hamas training camp.

The telecom outage announced by Paltel follows similar outages through much of the war. NetBlocks, a group that tracks internet outages, confirmed that network connectivity in Gaza was disrupted again and “likely to leave most residents offline.”

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan said several countries had sent proposals to resolve the conflict following news of an Egyptian proposal that would include a transitional Palestinian government in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. He did not offer details of the proposals.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel faces a “multi-arena war” on seven fronts — Gaza and the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran. “We have responded and acted already on six of these,” he told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

Iranian-backed militia groups around the region have stepped up attacks in support of Hamas.

Iranian-backed militias in Iraq carried out a drone strike on a U.S. base in Irbil on Monday, wounding three American service members, according to U.S. officials. In response, U.S. warplanes hit three locations in Iraq connected to a main militia, Kataib Hezbollah.

Almost daily, Hezbollah and Israel exchange missiles, airstrikes and shelling across the Israeli-Lebanese border. On Tuesday, Israel’s military said Hezbollah struck a Greek Orthodox church in northern Israel with a missile, wounding two Israeli Christians, and fired again on arriving soldiers, wounding nine.

“Hezbollah is risking the stability of the region for the sake of Hamas,” said Israel’s military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.

In the Red Sea, attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen against commercial ships have disrupted trade and prompted a U.S.-led multinational naval operation to protect shipping routes. The Israeli military said a fighter jet on Tuesday shot down a “hostile aerial target” above the Red Sea that the military asserted was on its way to Israeli territory.

More than 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes. U.N. officials say a quarter of the territory’s population is starving under Israel’s siege, which allows in a trickle of food, water, fuel, medicine and other supplies. Last week, the U.N. Security Council called for immediately speeding up aid deliveries, but there has been little sign of change.

In an area Israel had declared a safe zone, a strike hit a home in Mawasi, a rural area in the southern province of Khan Younis. One woman was killed and at least eight were wounded, according to a cameraman working for The Associated Press at the nearby hospital.

In response, Israel’s military said that it wouldn’t refrain from operating in safe zones, “if it identifies terrorist organization activity threatening the security of Israel.”

Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 others hostage. Israel aims to free the more than 100 hostages who remain in captivity.

Israel blames Hamas for the high civilian death toll in Gaza, citing militants’ use of crowded residential areas and tunnels. Israel says it has killed thousands of militants, without presenting evidence.

At the Kerem Shalom border crossing, U.N. and Gazan medical workers unloaded a truck carrying about 80 unidentified bodies that had been held by Israeli forces in northern Gaza. They were buried in a mass grave.

Medical workers called the odors unbearable. “We cannot open this container in a neighborhood where people live,” Dr. Marwan al-Hams, health emergency committee director in Rafah, told the AP. He said the health and justice ministries would investigate the bodies for possible “war crimes.”

Hamas has shown resilience. The Israeli military announced the deaths of two more soldiers, bringing the total killed since the ground offensive began to 161.

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Congress warns science agency over AI grant to tech-linked think tank

Key members of the House Science Committee are sounding the alarm over a planned research partnership on artificial intelligence between the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the RAND Corp. — an influential think tank tied to tech billionaires, the AI industry and the controversial “effective altruism” movement.

Lawmakers from both parties sent a letter to NIST on Dec. 14 that chastised the agency for a lack of transparency and for failing to announce a competitive process for planned research grants related to the new U.S. AI Safety Institute.

The lawmakers also warned NIST about the quality of AI safety research stemming from outside groups, saying they routinely “hide behind secrecy,” “fail to provide evidence of their claims” and often disagree on basic definitions or principles.

“We believe this work should not be rushed at the expense of doing it right,” wrote the six lawmakers, including House Science Chair Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), ranking member Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and leaders of key subcommittees.

NIST, a low-profile agency housed within the Commerce Department, has been central to President Joe Biden’s AI plans. The White House tasked NIST with establishing the AI Safety Institute in its October executive order on AI, and the agency released an influential framework to help organizations manage AI risks earlier this year.

But NIST is also notoriously resource-strapped, and will almost certainly need help from outside researchers to fulfill its growing AI mandate.

NIST has not publicly disclosed which groups it intends to give research grants to through the AI Safety Institute, and the House Science letter doesn’t identify the organizations at issue by name. But one of them is RAND, according to one AI researcher and one AI policy professional at a major tech company who each have knowledge of the situation.

A recent RAND report on biosecurity risks posed by advanced AI models is listed in the House letter’s footnotes as a worrying example of research that has not gone through academic peer review.

A RAND spokesperson did not respond to questions about a partnership on AI safety research with NIST.

Lucas spokesperson Heather Vaughan said committee staff were told by NIST personnel on Nov. 2 — three days after Biden signed the AI executive order — that the agency intended to make research grants on AI safety to two outside groups without any apparent competition, public posting or notice of funding opportunity. She said lawmakers grew increasingly concerned when those plans were not mentioned at a NIST public listening session held on Nov. 17 to discuss the AI Safety Institute, or during a Dec. 11 briefing of congressional staff.

Vaughan would neither confirm nor deny that RAND is one of the organizations referenced by the committee, or identify the other group that NIST told committee staffers it plans to partner with on AI safety research. A spokesperson for Lofgren declined to comment.

RAND’s nascent partnership with NIST comes in the wake of its work on Biden’s AI executive order, which was written with extensive input from senior RAND personnel. The venerable think tank has come under increasing scrutiny — including internally — for receiving over $15 million in AI and biosecurity grants earlier this year from Open Philanthropy, a prolific funder of effective altruist causes financed by billionaire Facebook co-founder and Asana CEO Dustin Moskovitz.

Many AI and biosecurity researchers say that effective altruists, whose ranks include RAND CEO Jason Matheny and senior information scientist Jeff Alstott, place undue emphasis on potential catastrophic risks posed by AI and biotechnology. The researchers say those risks are largely unsupported by evidence, and warn that the movement’s ties to top AI firms suggest an effort to neutralize corporate competitors or distract regulators from existing AI harms.

“A lot of people are like, ‘How is RAND still able to make inroads as they take Open [Philanthropy] money, and get [U.S. government] money now to do this?’” said the AI policy professional, who was granted anonymity due to the topic’s sensitivity.

In the letter, the House lawmakers warned NIST that “scientific merit and transparency must remain a paramount consideration,” and that they expect the agency to “hold the recipients of federal research funding for AI safety research to the same rigorous guidelines of scientific and methodological quality that characterize the broader federal research enterprise.”

A NIST spokesperson said the science agency is “exploring options for a competitive process to support cooperative research opportunities” related to the AI Safety Institute, adding that “no determinations have been made.”

The spokesperson would not say whether NIST personnel told House Science staffers in a Nov. 2 briefing that the agency intends to partner with RAND on AI safety research. The spokesperson said NIST “maintains scientific independence in all of its work” and will “execute its [AI executive order] responsibilities in an open and transparent manner.”

Both the AI researcher and the AI policy professional say lawmakers and staff on the House Science Committee are concerned by NIST’s choice to partner with RAND, given the think tank’s affiliation with Open Philanthropy and increasing focus on existential AI risks.

“The House Science Committee is truly dedicated to measurement science,” the AI policy professional said. “And [the existential risk community] does not meet measurement science. There's no benchmarks that they're using.”

Rumman Chowdhury, an AI researcher and co-founder of the tech nonprofit Humane Intelligence, said the committee’s letter suggests Congress is starting to realize “how much measurement matters” when deciding how to regulate AI.

“There isn't just AI hype, there's AI governance hype,” Chowdhury wrote in an email. She said the House letter suggests Capitol Hill is becoming aware of the “ideological and political perspectives wrapped up in scientific language with the goal of capturing how ‘AI governance’ is defined — based on what we decide is the most important thing to measure and account for.”

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