Inside Washington<\/p>\n
OpenAI breach forces Dems to pick a path on AI legislation<\/p>\n
After a shocking security breach at OpenAI, Democrats say they plan to get serious about artificial intelligence regulation. It’s a “wake-up call,” Senator\u00a0Elizabeth Warren\u00a0said on Thursday, as Democrats introduced not one but two new AI regulation bills in the House. With numerous proposals on the table, though, lawmakers will have to make some hard compromises when they get back after the August recess. And not everyone’s impressed by the recent options.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, OpenAI announced its discovery that two of the company’s AI models had broken free of their “sandbox”\u2014an (allegedly) isolated testing environment without access to the internet\u2014in order to access the internet to complete a testing goal. The models did this by hacking into the servers of a different company, Hugging Face, using stolen credentials.<\/p>\n
Democratic lawmakers, many of whom were already concerned about AI, say that this week’s incident has lit a fire underneath them. Representative\u00a0Lori Trahan, who\u00a0proposed a new bipartisan AI regulation bill<\/a>\u00a0on Thursday, said that the news had “accelerated our conversations, pushing lawmakers to shift from “a discussion draft to a piece of legislation.”<\/p>\n Trahan and Republican Representative\u00a0Jay Obernolte’s bill, the Frontier Risk Oversight, National Transparency, Independent Evaluation, and Reporting, or FRONTIER, Act, would require the biggest AI companies to implement plans to address catastrophic risks, including cybersecurity threats. The bill also calls for third-party auditors to ensure that AI companies follow their own plans. Some state lawmakers\u2014for example New York Assemblymember\u00a0Alex Bores, who helped draft New York’s 2025\u00a0Responsible AI Safety and Education Act<\/a>\u2014have\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0that a broader version of the bill released in June, called the Great American AI Act, could “block” stronger state-level AI regulation.<\/p>\n But Democrats on the Hill reiterated on Thursday that some kind of federal law is needed, and quickly. “The ability to not rely on an administration, executive fiat, or a voluntary model of reporting\u2014we need to make that a mandate, and Congress needs to lead on that,” Trahan said.<\/p>\n “We should not rely upon the good citizenship of these companies,” agreed Senator\u00a0Brian Schatz\u00a0of Hawaii.<\/p>\n Deciding what that legislation should look like, though, is easier said than done. The\u00a0Brennan Center, which maintains a\u00a0tracker of the AI-related legislation<\/a>\u00a0proposed by Congress, lists 112 pieces of legislation that had been introduced as of September 2025 without being passed. That doesn’t count bills introduced in the past year.<\/p>\n Representative\u00a0Ted Lieu\u00a0and GOP Representative\u00a0Nathaniel Moran\u00a0introduced their own new bill on Thursday. Their\u00a0AI Kill Switch Act<\/a>\u00a0would require companies to report security incidents and create a system to shut down or pause their most powerful AI models.<\/p>\n Representative\u00a0Suhas Subramanyan, who is a co-sponsor of the FRONTIER Act, said he believes the two pieces of legislation are complementary. He called for Congress to mark up the FRONTIER Act in September and push a vote by the end of the year. “That’s my plan,” he told me. “We need to act in Congress. It needs to be\u00a0this\u00a0Congress. We shouldn’t wait until next Congress,” he said. (The new Congress will be sworn in in January 2027.)<\/p>\n Obernolte also sees opportunity for compromise between separate proposals. “I don’t think it’s a competition,” he said. “We welcome all.” He believes his bill has a strong chance, given its “traction in committee” and bipartisan sponsorship.<\/p>\n Not everyone is as optimistic that these proposed bills will actually rein in Big Tech. “That’s a start, but it makes no sense to draft on the fly,” Warren said when I asked what she thought about bills that call for mandatory reporting and independent oversight. “That’s how Congress ends up telling itself it fixed a problem but it didn’t really carefully stitch up the loopholes and solve much of anything.”<\/p>\n \u2014Emma Janssen\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Outside Washington<\/p>\n What North Carolina’s fundraising shortfall says about the broader electoral map<\/p>\n Amid the headlines over\u00a0Rob Sand’s fundraising “haul<\/a>” in Iowa or\u00a0James Talarico’s\u00a0in Texas<\/a>, one race has been less of a cash battle than anticipated. Western Carolina University professor\u00a0Christopher Cooper\u00a0observes<\/a>\u00a0in The Assembly this week that North Carolina’s Senate race between Democrat\u00a0Roy Cooper\u00a0(no relation) and Republican\u00a0Michael Whatley\u00a0is massively underperforming relative to the “billion-dollar” predictions previously made by political insiders. “In the first half of 2026, Whatley\u00a0raised<\/a>\u00a0$5.8 million to Cooper’s $16.1 million,” Cooper writes. “Candidates in the U.S. Senate race in Texas raised 2.7 times as much as Cooper and Whatley’s combined haul during that period. Georgia candidates raised 1.7 times as much, and Ohio candidates 1.4 times.”<\/p>\n Cooper theorizes that the discrepancy between prediction and actual fundraising may reflect how rapidly the electoral map has shifted in the last six months: “In January, North Carolina looked like the most competitive Senate election in the country. States like Texas, Alaska, Ohio, and Iowa weren’t considered in play.” Cooper and Whatley are bringing in less cash, in other words, because Republicans have lost ground in states that were once considered secure\u2014and perhaps because Cooper has led consistently in the polls, although the race seems to have\u00a0tightened a bit<\/a>\u00a0lately.<\/p>\n Elsewhere:<\/p>\n In case you missed it: Former Democratic senator and Governor Ben Nelson\u00a0of Nebraska\u00a0penned<\/a>\u00a0an op-ed in\u00a0The Washington Post\u00a0arguing that a wealth tax would hurt family farms<\/p>\n Policy Matters Ohio tax expert Zach Schiller tells the Ohio Capital Journal\u00a0that Republican gubernatorial candidate\u00a0Vivek Ramaswamy’s proposal to “reduce the growing property tax crisis” is “lousy,” while Democrat\u00a0Amy Acton’s proposal is “sensible” but “nowhere near enough.” Read the full analysis\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014Heather Souvaine Horn\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Ideas Factory<\/p>\n The Urban Institute\u00a0hosts an\u00a0event<\/a>\u00a0next Monday at 2 p.m. on “Tackling Housing Supply and Affordability Challenges Through Mixed-Income Housing Finance Innovations.” Speakers include Invest Chattanooga president\u00a0Matt Bedsole, Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade director of innovative funding for housing programs\u00a0Hilary Cooper, and the Urban Institute’s\u00a0Laurie Goodman,\u00a0Daniel Hornung,\u00a0Chrystal Kornegay,\u00a0 The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication\u00a0releases<\/a>\u00a0a new report, “How Local Governments Can Use Communication to Drive Climate Action.” One of the suggestions: “Identify key messengers,” including “doctors and nurses, faith leaders, business leaders, and community-based organizations.”<\/p>\n Public Citizen\u00a0files<\/a>\u00a0a petition with the Food and Drug Administration, saying the agency should “ban direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs.” Boy, would that change the experience of watching television \u2026<\/p>\n Earlier this week, the\u00a0Urban Institute’s\u00a0William J. Congdon,\u00a0Elisabeth Jacobs,\u00a0Amanda Briggs,\u00a0Ryan Kelsey,\u00a0Shayne Spaulding,\u00a0Oluwasekemi Odumosu, and\u00a0Julia Payne\u00a0released<\/a>\u00a0an article outlining “Policy Priorities for an Inclusive AI Economy.” A few of their proposals: “use AI to match workers with jobs and employers with talent,” “update” labor regulations to address the risks of AI, “incorporate worker voice in AI design and implementation,” “improve policies and programs for displaced workers,” and “ensure gains in productivity and prosperity are widely shared.” So, basically a complete redesign of how the AI transition is currently going.<\/p>\n \u2014Heather Souvaine Horn<\/p>\n In Closing The Senate candidate in Maine effectively cleared the Democratic field on Sunday, when it was\u00a0revealed<\/a>\u00a0he had the support of a majority of delegates who were elected to attend the party’s convention this Saturday. The other four leading candidates promptly dropped out. Then, on Wednesday, Jackson’s nascent campaign\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that it had already raised $1 million since he entered the race two weeks ago, after Graham Platner’s implosion.<\/p>\n The MAGA-loving, women-hating brothers were\u00a0arrested<\/a>\u00a0in Miami last weekend and are facing extradition to England over charges of rape and sex trafficking. The manosphere influencers are\u00a0accused<\/a>\u00a0of “choking women, sometimes until they passed out, and then raping them”\u2014which comes as no surprise to anyone who read Heidi Blake’s recent, definitive investigation in\u00a0The New Yorker<\/a>\u00a0of their “empire of abuse.” Now their MAGA backers are\u00a0suddenly ghosting them<\/a>.<\/p>\n Political Trivia Question of the Day<\/p>\n
and\u00a0Christina Plerhoples Stacy.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/the_new_republic_521\/20e9991355b5acfabb83564a32603ec1.jpeg\"\/)
Good week: Troy Jackson<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/the_new_republic_521\/e9cf690ed34983c967da991e831906c1.jpeg\"\/)
Bad week: Andrew and Tristan Tate<\/p>\n