Jeffries calls on Johnson to cancel break and keep House in Washington to tackle AI

Jeffries told reporters at a Capitol Hill press conference that lawmakers should heed the call of AI industry leaders who voiced concerns about a lack of proper guardrails over the weekend.“Congress should not leave town 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,” Jeffries said. “Republicans have completely abandoned their responsibility to legislate and engage in public policy efforts in a responsible fashion in the area of artificial intelligence.” Earlier this month, House GOP leadership canceled votes for the last two weeks of September. Lawmakers are set to vote on Monday, but will depart Washington Thursday for a weekslong break. The House is not scheduled to return until Nov. 9, the week after Election Day.While the House is set to leave town, President Donald Trump and Johnson plan to meet with AI executives in the “next week or two,” according to the speaker.The meeting comes after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote an open letter over the weekend calling for an international slowdown on AI frontier model development after former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned, saying AI could “kill us all by the end of the decade” and that Anthropic and OpenAI are “gambling with our lives.”Trump said such fears amount to little more than a “hoax” in a series of Truth Social posts on Monday.HOUSE TO TAKE UP BILL SHIELDING CONSUMERS FROM ENERGY COSTS TIED TO DATA CENTERS“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ – and we will continue to do so!”Jeffries said he has not spoken with the speaker in recent days but that “Democrats independently have conversations with stakeholders in the industry, including some of the people who most recently raised alarms.”