Jeffries calls on Congress to stay in Washington to address AI concerns

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is calling on House GOP leaders to remain in Washington to allow Congress to consider new limits on AI companies following dire warnings from industry insiders about the threat the technology poses to humanity.

Speaking to reporters Monday in the Capitol, Jeffries said the calls for a slowdown from within the industry should be a wakeup call for lawmakers in the Capitol, who have dabbled at the edges of AI regulation for years without taking any significant steps to ensure public safety.

Jeffries did not promote specific reforms, but urged Congress to delay its long, pre-election recess “until something is done decisively to protect the safety and the well-being of the American people.”

“Republicans have completely abandoned their responsibility to legislate and engage in public policy efforts in a responsible fashion in the area of artificial intelligence,” Jeffries said.

The pressure is unlikely to bear fruit. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) opposes any swift action on new AI regulations, warning that hasty new limits risk overburdening American technology companies to the benefit of America’s global adversaries.

“The reflex of legislative bodies is to cover things up with red tape and in hyperregulation,” Johnson told reporters Monday in the Capitol. “If you do that, then you lose your edge.”

Johnson has scheduled the House to adjourn on Thursday and remain in recess through the Nov. 3 elections.

Still, the public anxieties surrounding AI — and the related issue of data centers, which are helping to fuel the AI boom — have increasingly become campaign fodder heading into the midterms, when both the House and Senate are up for grabs.

The issue reached new heights over the weekend when three top leaders in the AI industry — Dario Amodei, Elon Musk and Sam Altman — urged a more cautious approach to the development of the technology. A failure to do so, Amodei, the head of Anthropic, warned in a long blog post , could lead to global catastrophe.

President Trump has come out strongly in favor of data centers and against regulating AI — two positions that put him at odds with the majority of voters. And Democrats are highlighting both topics to portray the president and other GOP leaders as out of touch with public sentiment heading to the polls.

“They’re not really concerned about over-regulation. They want no regulation,” Jeffries said. “And that’s the height of irresponsibility.”

Jeffries noted that, in the previous Congress, he and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had launched an AI task force designed to balance the success of American AI companies with public safety precautions. The panel did not survive the transition into the new Congress — a development Jeffries blamed on Trump’s return to the White House.

“Republicans in this Congress, at the direction of Donald Trump, detonated that bipartisan effort and endangered the health and the safety and the well-being of the American people in doing so,” he said.