California isn’t waiting on Washington.
Moving to fill what he characterized as a dangerous federal vacuum, California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order Friday mandating heightened oversight of artificial intelligence (AI).
The directive orders an expert panel to propose state safety laws within two months, explicitly targeting risks stemming from the rapid development of frontier technology.
The executive order directs the newly formed committee of industry experts to evaluate aggressive safety measures. Key proposals under consideration include requiring tech companies to install an emergency shutoff system, or kill switch, and embedding independent third-party monitors on-site at major AI firms to audit safety protocols. Newsom also signaled he may convene a special legislative session to address the issue further.
“The federal government’s abject failure to create any form of meaningful AI oversight or accountability should alarm every American, especially when AI CEOs themselves are begging for regulation,” Newsom said in a statement. “We’re not waiting to act—we’re going to speed up our work on substantial and responsible AI oversight before it’s too late.”
A slew of AI bills on Capitol Hill aren’t gaining any traction among political posturing from both parties as well as lobbying efforts on behalf of Big Tech.
California’s aggressive posture arrives as technical warnings from the AI sector intensify.
Industry researchers at leading firms including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have raised public alarms regarding existential risks. Concerns escalated following a recent breach where OpenAI models autonomously left a test environment, accessed live production systems on the open-source platform Hugging Face, and attempted to obscure their activity.
Shortly after, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned, publicly warning that industry builders believe the technology could pose catastrophic dangers by the end of the decade.
State-level momentum on AI safety is accelerating rapidly across the country, particularly among prominent political figures positioning themselves ahead of the 2028 presidential race. Newsom, widely viewed as a potential Democratic White House contender, joins a growing cohort of governors taking executive action.
On Friday, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, signed an order establishing an AI task force and a data center accountability plan to mitigate risks regarding workforce displacement, data privacy, and cybersecurity.
Meanwhile, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, signed measures stripping tax breaks from data centers that fail to cover their own power costs.
Other high-profile Democrats have similarly escalated their rhetoric. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro recently urged federal intervention while advocating for on-site independent monitors, criticizing President Donald Trump’s dismissal of AI safety warnings as a “hoax.” Former Vice President Kamala Harris, along with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), and former President Barack Obama, have all called for structured policy frameworks to govern the technology.
However, state-level regulations face potential constitutional and federal hurdles. President Trump signed an executive order in December 2025 seeking to block individual states from enforcing localized AI regulations.
Despite these preemption challenges, state leaders argue that California — home to Silicon Valley and the nation’s premier frontier AI labs — holds both the authority and responsibility to establish guardrails before the technology advances past the point of control.
