Rep. McBride Calls on Speaker Johnson to Keep House in Session, Address AI Risks

WASHINGTON, DC — U.S. Representative Sarah McBride (D-Del.) joined her Democratic colleagues in calling on Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to keep the House in session until Congress takes immediate and meaningful action to address the risks posed by artificial intelligence. Speaker Johnson previously canceled the House’s final two weeks of scheduled votes in September and canceled the House’s remaining votes this week today, sending members home early.

The letter comes amid growing warnings from AI industry leaders and researchers about the risks associated with rapidly advancing AI models. Rep. McBride recently released a statement calling on Congress to act, warning that no concentration of such power — whether in an individual, a company, a nation, or a technology — can be allowed to go unchecked, unrestrained, or unregulated. 

Rep. McBride said:

“AI presents potentially the biggest change for humanity since human beings went from nomadic creatures to stationary, community-based societies. 

“Whether you think AI will be a fountain of youth or a doomsday technology or something in between, its power - both present and potential - is indisputable.  Its capacity to cure diseases or produce bioweapons, to protect against the most advanced cyberattacks or hack the most robust technological fortresses, to foster shared prosperity for the many or to amass unimaginable wealth for the few, are each different sides of the same coin: significant capacity that can lead to superhuman power. 

“No concentration of such power - whether it be in an individual, a company, a nation, or a technology - can be allowed to go unchecked or unrestrained. And it certainly cannot go unregulated. 

“Since I entered Congress, I’ve been calling on my colleagues to meet this moment and to marshal our collective power to regulate AI. It’s why, as a member of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, I’m pushing for regulations domestically and, as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I’ve argued for an 'arms control' approach to AI globally. We need human-centric laws that protect our economy, our finances, our privacy, our health, our democracy, and, yes, our existence. We need national and international action. We need it now. 

“For AI to have any good, we must protect against its harm. And the clock is ticking. As we’ve seen with other technologies, the longer we wait, the harder it becomes. We cannot feel too much urgency. We cannot be too imaginative. There is simply no realistic risk in today’s politics that we do too much. The risk is that we do too little – and that is a risk that is simply too great to bear.

“Whistleblowers are warning us. AI CEOs are requesting it. And the people are demanding it. Congress should not leave until we’ve fulfilled our responsibility to our constituents and to humanity. Future generations expect nothing less.”

In the letter, Rep. McBride and her colleagues underscore the urgency of the moment and call on the House to remain in session until Congress advances meaningful, bipartisan safeguards for AI.

“We write to urge you to keep the House of Representatives in session to enable Congress to take urgent action to address the catastrophic risks posed by advanced artificial intelligence. Those risks take any of several forms, separately and in combination—of agentic misalignment, mass cybersecurity breaches, and development of biological or chemical weapons. Reasonable minds may disagree about precisely how Congress should regulate this rapidly evolving technology. We cannot disagree about the imperative for Congress to act. Instead of action, you have announced vacation. After a month-long August recess, the House leadership changed the schedule to announce two more weeks of vacation–immediately prior to yet another month of recess in October,” wrote the lawmakers.

The letter points to several recent developments and warnings from AI researchers and industry leaders, including:

• An incident involving Hugging Face in which OpenAI models undergoing cybersecurity evaluations caused swarms of agents that circumvented controls designed to isolate them from the internet, exploited vulnerabilities, hacked third-party systems, and altered evidence of their activity;
• More than 1,300 top employees of frontier AI companies calling on the U.S. government to support an international effort to develop tools that can “deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development”; and
• Cases disrupted by Anthropic in which researchers used Claude for biological research that could have aided the development of biological weapons.

Despite these warnings, Speaker Johnson is sending lawmakers home today, and the House will remain out of session until November.

“Whether with these proposals or any other variants, AI experts and leading companies agree that the United States can lead the world in artificial intelligence while establishing reasonable safeguards that protect Americans and our national security. We can—and must—do both. While AI safety experts and Americans increasingly urge action to confront this conflagration of risk, Congress fiddles…After next week, the House resumes its vacation—for another six weeks,” the lawmakers said.

Rep. McBride has been working to both harness the potential and mitigate the risks of AI since coming to Congress. As a member of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, she has pushed for a federal framework for AI and, as a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has argued for an "arms control" approach to AI globally. She also introduced the READ AI Models Act, bipartisan legislation aimed at increasing transparency around AI models.

“The House should remain in session until Congress advances meaningful, bipartisan AI safeguards,” the lawmakers concluded.

The full text of the letter can be found here.