Jeffries: Congress must act urgently to slow AI development

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told ABC’s This Week that lawmakers must act urgently on AI, cited a Democratic commission’s coming aggressive framework, and said decisive action should slow the pace of development to protect the public.

House Democratic leadership is now on the “slow the pace, Congress act now” side. Speaker Johnson said the opposite the same day. A Tuesday meeting priority is real. A passed bill is not.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) appeared Sunday on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. He said lawmakers “certainly need to begin to act urgently to address the challenges that exist.” The ABC News rush transcript of that airing is the filing event. These are Sunday-show remarks. They are not a bill passed, a recess restored, a published framework, a ban enacted, or a kill switch mandated.

Jeffries blamed Republicans for abandoning responsibility. He said Speaker Mike Johnson “killed a bipartisan task force this Congress” that was prepared to erect guardrails to protect the health, safety, and well-being of the American people.

On the Democratic side, he said Democrats began last December a commission on artificial intelligence and the innovation economy to evaluate next steps and “present an aggressive framework which we are in the process of doing, so that Congress can act on behalf of the American people.”

The ABC rush transcript quotes him: “We should take decisive action now so that we can slow down, as the CEOs have recently acknowledged, slow down the pace of development in order to protect the American people and ensure that A.I. is proceeding safely.” The “CEOs have recently acknowledged” clause is his attribution — not a new lab statement in this filing.

On the calendar, House Republicans “effectively canceled the last two weeks of the legislative session scheduled for this month.” The Democratic caucus meets Tuesday morning; “a high priority will be action on artificial intelligence.” Asked about Senator Bernie Sanders’s superintelligence ban and Rep. Ted Lieu’s kill-switch proposal, Jeffries said “we’ll have that conversation this week upon our return.” He did not endorse a ban or a kill switch on the air.

Counterpoint already on the wire: Speaker Johnson the same day said Congress will not lead an emergency AI-safety moratorium and wants labs to own product safety first (johnson-congress-wont-lead-ai-safety).