AI Congress describes a lawmaker's current AI policy posture. It does not score general ideology, partisanship, technical knowledge, effectiveness, or personal character.
Party never determines a classification. Interest-group ratings and reporting can help locate evidence, but published assessments rely on the underlying legislation, vote, framework, official statement, or other primary record.
Three camps.
The camp is a concise top-level description. The underlying dimension scores and evidence remain the substantive assessment.
| Camp | Working definition | Typical evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Move Faster | Prioritizes rapid AI development, infrastructure, and adoption through lighter regulation, regulatory flexibility, or narrowly targeted rules. | Permitting reform, sandboxes, national uniformity, adoption incentives, or opposition to broad AI-specific rules. |
| Set Guardrails | Supports continued development while imposing meaningful safety, consumer, worker, competition, or infrastructure requirements. | Mandatory testing, defined liability, community conditions, worker transition, or targeted high-risk-use rules. |
| Slow Down | Supports policies that pause or materially constrain advanced AI development, release, infrastructure scaling, or private control. | Moratoria, broad licensing before release, government approval, or substantial public control of leading AI firms. |
It means the reviewed record does not support a defensible overall classification. It should never be interpreted as neutral, moderate, undecided, or disengaged.
5 dimensions
Each dimension has its own five-position rubric. The endpoints are policy-specific, so the numeric values are not a general liberal-to-conservative scale.
| Dimension | Position 1 | Position 3 | Position 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data Centers | Pause Construction | Build with Conditions | Build Faster |
| AI Rules | Approval Before Release | Targeted Guardrails | Keep Rules Light |
| Workers | Prevent Displacement | Prepare Workers | Prioritize Adoption |
| Market Power | Public Control | Enforce Competition | Limit Intervention |
| Who Sets the Rules | States Lead | Shared Authority | Federal Rules Only |
Evidence hierarchy.
Direct action carries more weight than general rhetoric. Recent comprehensive frameworks can outweigh older or narrower statements when the editorial rationale explains the choice.
| Level | Evidence | Use |
|---|---|---|
| A | Sponsored legislation, direct amendments, clean roll-call votes, and comprehensive official frameworks. | Primary basis for dimension and overall classifications. |
| B | Cosponsored legislation, committee action, formal letters, detailed floor statements, and detailed official statements. | Direct support, corroboration, and current-position evidence. |
| C | Campaign platforms, candidate questionnaires, official press releases, substantive interviews, and clear first-party social statements. | A specific statement can support a dimension score when the policy direction is unambiguous. |
| D | Brief or ambiguous remarks, secondary summaries, and reported characterizations without a direct quotation. | Discovery and context only. Not sufficient by itself for a published classification. |
Overall classification
The top-level camp uses Data Centers, AI Rules, Workers, and Market Power. Who Sets the Rules is shown separately because federalism does not move cleanly along the same restrictive-to-permissive direction.
A classified senator needs at least three scored directional dimensions, including Data Centers or AI Rules, and at least two direct primary sources. Arithmetic provides an initial range. Explicit moratoria, broad licensing, acceleration frameworks, and conflicting comprehensive records trigger manual editorial review.
Corrections and changes
Classifications are dated snapshots of an evolving public record. New legislation, votes, campaign platforms, or corrected source interpretation can change a score. The source record and rationale should make those changes auditable.
Race selection
The Midterms Hub is a focused research set, not an election forecast or an exhaustive list of competitive races. A race is included when the major-party nominees are confirmed and the current public record supports useful records for both candidates on at least one AI-related dimension.
The same evidence hierarchy applies to Senate and House candidates. Campaign statements are labeled separately from legislative and government records. A missing or ambiguous position remains unscored.