{"slug": "pelosi-says-bidens-inner-circle-should-have-acted-4-takeaways-from-sacramento", "title": "Pelosi says Biden’s inner circle should have acted: 4 takeaways from Sacramento summit", "summary": "Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at Politico's 'The California Agenda: Sacramento Summit' that President Joe Biden's inner circle should have acted on concerns about his mental fitness for the 2024 race, while denying she asked him to drop out. Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton blamed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for public distrust of AI, and Democrat Xavier Becerra proposed a 'power hour' plan for free electricity for low-income families.", "body_md": "**Getting your**\n\n[Trinity Audio](//trinityaudio.ai)player ready...Former House Speaker [Nancy Pelosi](https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/06/29/nancy-pelosis-next-act-a-democracy-institute-at-uc-berkeley/) said that those close to [President Joe Biden](https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/07/21/president-joe-biden-ends-his-2024-bid/) should have raised concerns about whether he was mentally fit enough to run for a second term in 2024.\n\n“I do think that those who did know should have acted upon that information,” the outgoing Bay Area congresswoman said Tuesday.\n\nPelosi’s comments about the former president were made at Politico’s “The California Agenda: Sacramento Summit” — a one-day gathering of policy and business leaders to discuss the state’s future.\n\nHere are the biggest takeaways:\n\n#### Pelosi revisits Biden’s exit\n\nPelosi denied that she asked Biden to drop out of the race, despite reports from several national outlets that the former speaker played a major role in the pressure campaign for him to exit the race. Instead, she said she met with Biden to “question the polling” and raise concerns about how his campaign was being conducted.\n\n“I am not a big believer in polling in terms of who’s ahead in a race, but I believe in understanding what the public is thinking because we represent them so we have to know that,” she said.\n\nPelosi also said she told Biden that the public “would like to hear that you’ve had testing that demonstrates that you can serve.”\n\n“He said, ‘I get tested every day in what I’m doing and the rest of that,'” she recounted. “I said, ‘I think people want to see something more in that regard.'”\n\nPelosi declined to say who she would support in the next presidential race as speculation builds about Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris. However, she did chime in on the 2026 midterms, setting a goal for Democrats to flip 30 U.S. House seats from red to blue.\n\n#### Hilton on AI’s reputation\n\nFormer Fox News host and Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton hasn’t shied away from using artificial intelligence in his campaign, having released a number of AI-generated videos on social media mocking his political rivals.\n\nWhen asked about the public’s distrust of AI, Hilton blamed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, saying they have been a “disaster for the reputation of the industry.”\n\n“They’ve had tremendous success in terms of their business, but the narrative that they’ve been spinning for years has just been catastrophic for public trust in their own industry,” Hilton said. “This endless doom laden predictions about what the things that they’re working on are going to do to our economy and our society I think have fed this.”\n\nHe added that he believes California is in “danger of both over and under regulating” the industry — over regulating when it comes to potential benefits of incorporating it into medicine and using it as a tool to build jobs and under regulating when it comes to child safety as well as the impact on creative fields.\n\n#### Becerra’s “Power Hour”\n\nFormer Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Democrat facing off with Hilton in the November governor’s race, announced a new policy proposal at the summit — a first-in-the-nation plan to give some residents up to two hours of free electricity in the middle of the day.\n\nReferred to as the “power hour,” Becerra said low-income families would be eligible and that it would help California shift energy usage away from peak demand times, between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m., by incentivizing free electricity earlier in the day. He believes he could institute the proposal in his first year in office.\n\n“We produce so much solar energy that oftentimes in the afternoon we can’t make use of all of it,” he said. “It essentially goes to waste or we ship it off to some other state.” California has also [increased its battery power storage capacity in recent years.](https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/18/a-gamechanger-how-giant-batteries-are-making-californias-power-grid-stronger-and-reducing-the-risk-of-blackouts-during-heat-waves/)\n\nBecerra’s campaign said in a news release that it could help reduce a family’s utility bill by roughly $1,000 a year.\n\n#### Bonta, Paramount spar\n\nAttorney General Rob Bonta accused Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison of attempting to “blackmail” California regulators by threatening to move operations out of the state amid its antitrust challenge to the Warner Bros. merger.\n\n“It is an attempt to blackmail the regulators who are daring to enforce the law fairly and firmly, who are daring to stand up for the rule of law, for the free and fair market instead of a rigged market, and for consumers and workers in the industry by moving to block what is unlawful,” he said.\n\nBonta, who’s signaled interest in a future run for governor, is [leading a 12-state lawsuit against the entertainment giant](https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/07/20/judge-pauses-paramount-warner-merger/), arguing that the merger would “extinguish competition” in Hollywood. The lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in March.\n\nThe state attorney general said he is “very happy with where we are” in the litigation and that Paramount is “eager” to enter settlement talks.\n\nDuring an interview later in the day, Makan Delrahim, Paramount’s chief legal officer, addressed Bonta’s “blackmail” comments.\n\n“This state seems to view this merger in a different market,” he said, noting that 67 other countries had approved it. “You have to take a look at the business environment and look to see what’s best for not only the community and the business, and ultimately, you know, go to the place where you’re wanted.”", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/pelosi-says-bidens-inner-circle-should-have-acted-4-takeaways-from-sacramento", "canonical_source": "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/08/12/pelosi-says-bidens-inner-circle-should-have-acted-4-takeaways-from-sacramento-summit/", "published_at": "2026-08-12 22:33:27+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-12 22:45:43.075427+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Nancy Pelosi", "Joe Biden", "Steve Hilton", "Sam Altman", "Dario Amodei", "Xavier Becerra", "OpenAI", "Anthropic"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/pelosi-says-bidens-inner-circle-should-have-acted-4-takeaways-from-sacramento", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/pelosi-says-bidens-inner-circle-should-have-acted-4-takeaways-from-sacramento.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/pelosi-says-bidens-inner-circle-should-have-acted-4-takeaways-from-sacramento.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/pelosi-says-bidens-inner-circle-should-have-acted-4-takeaways-from-sacramento.jsonld"}}