Congress
Thune says ‘light touch’ needed on AI regulation
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday he sees a role for Congress in regulating artificial intelligence — albeit with a “light touch.”
Thune’s comments, made to reporters in the Capitol as President Donald Trump publicly railed against regulating frontier AI models, are the first he’s made since industry insiders sounded alarm bells about the technology’s potentially catastrophic impacts on humanity.
“It needs to strike a balance, light touch. You don’t want to stifle innovation, but I think you also want to make sure that the more advanced threats can be mitigated, and there’s a capability in place to do that,” Thune said.
He added that he believed Congress could put “guardrails around those types of more consequential threats without in any way harming our ability to stay ahead in the AI race.”
Thune introduced an AI safety bill with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in 2023 and is negotiating a revised version that he said Monday “reflects the approach” he is advocating. Thune said he spoke with Klobuchar over the weekend about the revised bill, which is also being negotiated with Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and expressed hopes it would be finalized “hopefully soon” and that they can “get a path forward for it.”
Cruz previously told Blue Light News that he could hold a committee vote on AI legislation before the chamber adjourns ahead of the midterm elections — perhaps as soon as the end of next week.
President Donald Trump nominated Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) to be the next U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia on Monday, part of a spate of nominations sent to the Senate less than two months before the midterms decides the fate of the GOP’s control of the chamber.
Hunt, one of the first Black Republicans to represent Texas in the House, was one of three Republican candidates locked in a fierce battle for a Senate seat in Texas earlier this year.
Trump held off on endorsing a candidate in the initial primary but backed state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the runoff. Hunt pitched himself as a staunch Trump ally in that race and quickly endorsed Paxton — the eventual winner — once Trump signaled his favorite.
The ambassadorship was last held by Michael Ratney, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden and served in the position until January 2025.
Trump has long made relations with Saudi Arabia a priority, welcoming Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the White House in 2025 and striking deals with the kingdom. But the nomination comes as tensions between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Houthis has reignited and the war in Iran has caused disruptions in its ability to export oil.
The other 40 nominations sent Monday to the Senate include some that Trump had previously announced on social media, including Heidi Overton as the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and Hung Cao as the next Navy secretary.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Monday for immediate congressional action to regulate artificial intelligence — his most urgent call to date for guardrails on the rapidly advancing technology amid warnings it could eradicate humanity if left unchecked.
“The explosive growth of artificial intelligence and the challenges that are therein presented — that’s not a hoax,” Jeffries said at his weekly news conference. “It’s very real, despite what Donald Trump has to say about that issue as well, and it requires decisive congressional action immediately, in a manner consistent with what some of the leading AI voices in the country are now saying needs to happen, as it relates to slowing things down to protect the health, the safety and the well-being of the American people.”
Jeffries’ call for regulation comes days after an ex-Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, warned that AI could “kill us all,” prompting calls from the company’s CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI CEO Elon Musk for an AI development slowdown. Trump has responded by downplaying the risks and doubling down in his support for accelerating AI breakthroughs to compete with China.
Jeffries urged Speaker Mike Johnson Monday to keep Congress in session “until something is done decisively to protect the safety and the well-being of the American people, in the face of growing concerns being raised by experts within the artificial intelligence industry itself.”
Johnson canceled the last two weeks of session before the midterms, meaning that the House is slated to leave Capitol Hill on Thursday and not return until Nov. 9. The speaker has given no indication he will revisit this plan and has remained noncommittal on whether the chamber will consider AI safety legislation ahead of the elections, if at all.
Jeffries also said the Democrat-only AI commission he convened this Congress could begin rolling out its policy recommendations soon, noting he plans to meet with the group’s three co-chairs this week. And he blamed Johnson for declining to reconstitute a bipartisan AI task force that would have allowed members of both parties to work together on the issue.
“We want to ensure that American entrepreneurs and companies can continue to lead in this space and not be overcome by the Chinese Communist Party,” Jeffries said of what the Democratic-led commission has been working on. “But on the other hand, we’ve got to ensure that the American people actually experience the benefits of artificial intelligence without being subjected to the very real, and very grave and very dangerous downsides.”
But while Jeffries is positioning Democrats as leaders on AI policy — now and in the next Congress — he declined to endorse a proposal from some of his colleagues to create a select AI committee if the party wins the majority in November.
“We’re focused on the substance, not the process,” he said, adding that any select committee discussions would take place after election day.
Jeffries did endorse the Ratepayer Protection Act — a bipartisan bill intended to shield Americans from energy costs associated with the data center boom — which is slated for a vote Tuesday.
“It’s a step forward,” he said. “More clearly needs to be done.”
OpenAI’s top lobbyist is on Capitol Hill Monday to meet with lawmakers as anxieties about artificial intelligence abound throughout the country.
The company’s chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, plans to sit down with a bipartisan mix of members of the House and Senate — including those in leadership, a company spokesperson told Blue Light News.
The visit comes days after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joined Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in calling for the AI industry to slow the pace of developing the rapidly evolving technology, after an ex-researcher with Anthropic warned AI left unchecked could potentially cause human extinction in a matter of years. The comments have ignited a firestorm of debate about the role of government in setting guardrails around the technology.
Lehane has separately been pushing for state AI safety laws that the industry finds palatable in places like California, Illinois and New York. Congress, meanwhile, has failed to take substantive action. He published a blog post last week about the need for new policies at the state and federal level as the technology’s capabilities has “reached a new chapter.”
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