Amid warnings from artificial intelligence developers that AI could destroy humanity, potential Democratic presidential candidates are calling for increased federal regulation and criticizing President Donald Trump’s dismissal of concerns about the fast-changing technology.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has signaled interest in running, called on the federal government to "step forward with robust, national regulations that match the urgency of this moment" on Sept. 9 after signing bills to create a framework for independent third-party evaluations of AI systems, set standards for AI auditors and improve child safety protections for AI chatbots.
Democratic Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego sent Senate leaders a Sept. 9 letter asking to establish
a Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence in 2027 and echoed that request in a Sept. 15 interview on MSNOW.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a former proponent of data center development, signed an August executive order placing new restrictions on data centers, including requiring approval from local communities. Shapiro, who was on the short list to be former Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate in 2024, will also give a speech on AI policy on Sept. 17 in Pittsburgh.
“I’m very concerned about a White House that has just told these companies to run free and basically opposed any kind of meaningful regulation,” former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sept. 13, referring to the Trump administration's resistance to calls for new AI regulation. Buttigieg said it is “deeply dangerous to Americans and the world” for the president and Congress to not act immediately.
Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Georgia, who is the subject of growing 2028 buzz, said during a Sept. 13 rally for his reelection campaign that Americans are filled with dread by the “crushing weakness of our politics against the massive stakes of our times.”
“A capable president would move swiftly to secure and reassure the American people, rush inspectors into frontier labs, fortify the nation against bioterrorism, demand legislation from Congress, and lead the world toward an AI treaty,” he said.
Intra-party divisions
Harris praised a new push to connect AI industry leaders and Democrats seeking new regulations as “encouraging.” The effort, called Project Blueprint, is being run by Democratic megadonor Ron Conway’s venture capital firm SV Angel. The company hired Jay Carney, a former press secretary for President Barack Obama, to lead the project.
“It is possible to heed the warnings of so many AI researchers and address safety concerns without sacrificing the technology’s benefits,” Harris wrote on X Sept. 14. “But time is running out; the federal government must act quickly.”
Members of the party’s liberal wing pushed back. Morris Katz, one of the strategists behind Zohran Mamdani’s successful 2025 New York City mayoral campaign, called her comment a “total misread.”
“The problem is the outsized influence of industry,” Katz wrote on X. “Take them on. Don’t serve as an accomplice.”
Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, warned against any effort to give AI companies a larger role in shaping the guardrails placed on their industry.
“This is not a moment for kumbaya with big tech billionaires who know that they have already done bad things and are looking for government whitewashing and potentially bailouts,” Green told USA TODAY. “This is a potential repeat of the banking collapse.”
Centrists in the party, however, argue Democrats must find the right balance between placing limitations on AI and embracing the technology’s potential.
“If you want to be president of the United States, you’re going to have to chart a path that says we are pro-innovation, pro-technologies that are going to help people,” said Oliver Libby, a venture capitalist and Democratic donor and adviser. “But those things should be done within the bounds of strong, and hopefully national regulatory regimes.”
Real solutions will come from bipartisanship, not the extremes of the two parties, said Liam Kerr, the co-founder of Welcome PAC, a group working to boost moderates’ influence in the Democratic Party.
“The more educated voters become on this complex issue, the more they’re going to want people who can credibly say they’ll work with the other side to forge an enduring solution to a massive, complicated problem,” he said.
Republicans walk a tightrope
Voters' AI fears turned existential on Sept. 8, when Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon announced his resignation and claimed that insiders believe AI could “kill us all by the end of the decade.” Coxon's viral posts, along with warnings from other researchers, have fueled the recent push for the federal government to step in.
Trump, an ally of the tech industry and an enthusiastic booster of AI and the data centers that power it, warned of “a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers” in a Sept. 14 Truth Social post.
"The only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!" Trump wrote in the post.
However, some Republicans have embraced regulating the industry.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, a leading Republican voice on stronger AI regulation and chair of the Homeland Security subcommittee on disaster management, announced Sept. 10 that the panel would investigate OpenAI after its bots launched an unauthorized hacking attack of rival company Hugging Face in July. Hawley said in a letter to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that the inquiry will also cover "growing allegations of the existential risk of new AI products." (Though Hawley is often mentioned as a potential 2028 candidate, the senator told the Washington Examiner on Sept. 15 he has "no intention of running.")
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who chairs the Senate committee that oversees AI, said he is working with Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and GOP Senate Majority Leader John Thune to draft a bill to address potential biological or nuclear threats from AI.
"We cannot stick our heads in the sand and pretend this technology isn’t happening," Cruz, who ran for president in 2016 and hasn't ruled out another run, wrote on X on Sept. 9. "We need guardrails. But America needs to lead."
Vice President JD Vance, the 2028 GOP frontrunner, told reporters Sept. 14 that the administration wants to "regulate smartly." He also called on AI companies to "stop" if they're "building Frankenstein" during a Sept. 15 interview with the All-In podcast.
An issue up for grabs
A majority of American adults are more concerned about the impacts of AI – including the impact data centers will have on the environment and energy prices to the risk of job losses and data privacy concerns – than they are excited about its possibilities, according to an August Pew Research Center poll.
Voters haven't chosen one party to trust on the issue. A New York Times/Siena poll released Sept. 15 found that voters are split on which party they trust more to address AI and data centers, with 42% saying Republicans and 40% saying Democrats, within the poll’s margin of error. Another 18% said they didn’t know.
“If data centers are the issue of the midterms, then AI more broadly is going to be the issue of 2028,” Ravi Mangla, a spokesperson for the progressive Working Families Party, told USA TODAY. “Candidates are going to be judged by how seriously they’re taking the issue and how close they are with the tech industry.”
New groups are forming to help shape Democratic policies toward a unified vision. New York Assemblymember Alex Bores, an AI regulation advocate who lost a June congressional primary after being targeted by millions in AI super PAC spending, recently launched Who Decides, a proposed $30 million effort aimed at encouraging Democrats to run on a common AI safety agenda.
Alums of Hillary Clinton and independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaigns co-founded Tomorrow Together Action, a group that plans to spend $10 million during the midterm elections to help House candidates in swing states who support limits on data center construction, as well as data privacy and child safety regulations.
“Voters are deeply concerned that they’re losing control over the decisions that matter in their life to a technology controlled by a small group of billionaire executives,” Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who presented at a recent gathering hosted by Tomorrow Together Action, told USA TODAY. “It’s a question of who controls the decisions in your life – that’s where voters are, and that’s where Democrats can meet them.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Voters are deeply concerned.' Democratic 2028 hopefuls debate AI regulations
