Hakeem Jeffries Demands Urgent Action On AI; John Thune Calls For ‘Light Touch’

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader John Thune proposed different approaches on handling artificial intelligence (AI) Monday.

President Donald Trump brushed off tech leaders’ warnings about AI as a conspiracy and argued no additional guardrails were needed. Thune said Congress needs to regulate AI with a “light touch” to avoid “consequential threats” without stifling innovation, while Democrats including Jeffries, called for stricter guardrails on AI models.

“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. “Obviously, there’s responsibility for the companies to do that when it comes to you know the frontier on some of these models. But I also think that there is a way in which Congress can put guardrails around those types of more consequential threats, without in any way harming our ability to stay ahead in the AI race, which I think is also I think very important.”

Jeffries said during a Monday press conference that threats posed by AI warranted “decisive congressional action immediately.” He said on Sirius XM’s “The Mike Muse Show” that Congress must move “urgently” to place guardrails on AI.

“Well, I think we have to move urgently on this issue with a framework that recognizes the importance of allowing American companies and entrepreneurs to continue to lead in this space while putting in place guardrails to protect the American people from bad actors and bad behavior and, God forbid, damage that can be done to the American people. And it should be a high priority.”

Jeffries called on Speaker Mike Johnson to keep Congress in session until members took action on AI.

Republicans had mixed views on how to regulate AI, as Republican Florida Rep. Byron Donalds and Johnson argued there should be guardrails to slow AI development down. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Republican South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace said Monday that Trump rightly pointed out slowing down AI development would put the U.S. at major risk of falling behind China.

“Well, the president is correct in saying that this is a race between the United States and China, and America has got to win,” Scalise told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It’s not surprising that Anthropic of all people is calling for a heavy regulatory structure because they want to crush their competitors, the next start up, the next company that’s going to be the future tech company would be crushed if you had heavy regulations. Now, obviously, there’s laws on the books that say these companies not only have a moral responsibility to be responsible, they have a legal responsibility. You can’t create a product that’s going to kill people, and if they’re doing that, then they’re going to have serious problems.”

Republican Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett suggested codifying Trump’s executive orders on AI regulation since future president may not be trusted. Republican Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno told the DCNF that Trump is concerned about “irrational fears” destroying the AI industry.

Democratic New York Assemblymember Alex Bores launched a $30 million political effort called “Who Decides,” which intended to unite Democrats around regulating AI technology.

Tech leaders and prominent AI researchers resigned from major labs and warned that AI development must slow down to prevent a serious risk to humanity. A top researcher at Anthropic warned Wednesday there was more than a 10% chance AI “would kill all humans” within the next decade.

Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, published a letter Saturday arguing AI could outrun humans’ ability to understand or control what they were creating.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded the administration hold a briefing with senators to address the threats.

Republican Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy announced he would introduce a bill to require all AI models to have a kill switch. He clarified he did not know how the White House would respond to such legislation.

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