The AI Election: How Artificial Intelligence Shaped the 2026 Midterms

About this event

One week after Election Day, Newsweek will bring together policy experts and Washington insiders to examine the 2026 midterm results through the lens of artificial intelligence. The discussion will draw on Newsweek’s AI Policy Scorecard (https://www.newsweek.com/ai-policy-scorecard), which tracks the public records of all 537 sitting members of Congress across five areas of AI policy: regulation and governance, data centers and energy, jobs and the economy, safety and privacy, and national security and China. Using those findings as a starting point, the panel will look at what the results reveal about the emerging politics of AI: where the issue mattered, how positions cut across traditional party lines, and how the composition of the next Congress could reshape the policy fights ahead. The panel will feature Nathaniel Persily, James B. McClatchy professor of law at Stanford Law School and co-director of the Stanford Law AI Initiative and the Stanford AI Governance Lab; Brent Buchanan, founder and CEO of Cygnal; Nick Penniman, founder and CEO of Issue One; and Andrew Mamo, communications advisor at The Bench. Moderated by Gabriel Snyder, Newsweek’s executive editor, enterprise, the conversation will also explore how campaigns and outside groups approached AI during the election, what the results mean for lobbying and advocacy in Washington and which questions are likely to confront lawmakers. Register here: https://app.sequel.io/newsweek/ai-policy-midterms