The letter of September 15, 2026 is a ten-page letter to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson urging him "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." It was drafted by Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-California) and led by Liccardo with Reps. George Whitesides (D-California), Lori Trahan (D-Massachusetts) and Ted Lieu (D-California), and carries 107 signatures. Liccardo's office released it on September 16, 2026, describing the signatories as 107 House Democrats (Source: liccardo.house.gov). The body occupies the first two pages, and the typed signature blocks run from the foot of page 2 to page 10.
The ask
The letter asks for floor time, not for a particular bill. "The House should remain in session until Congress advances meaningful, bipartisan AI safeguards," it states. It frames the request against the House schedule: "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." It says that when the House returned after the August recess, "we consumed floor time with debates and votes on performative resolutions opposing socialism," and that "After next week, the House resumes its vacation—for another six weeks." Liccardo's accompanying statement put the shutdown at seven weeks: "Speaker Mike Johnson is shutting down Congress for seven weeks. The American people need action, not vacation." The press release describes the request as asking Johnson to "cancel the upcoming recess to vote on legislation creating AI safeguards" (Source: liccardo.house.gov).
The letter states that "Reasonable minds may disagree about precisely how Congress should regulate this rapidly evolving technology. We cannot disagree about the imperative for Congress to act."
The risks named
The letter names three forms of catastrophic risk, "separately and in combination": "agentic misalignment, mass cybersecurity breaches, and development of biological or chemical weapons."
The five disclosures cited
The letter presents "a series of public disclosures from the companies and researchers developing the world's most capable AI systems" as evidence of urgency, and says they "must not constitute yet another in a long series of 'warning shots,' but rather, a starting gun." Each bullet links a source. The letter's characterizations differ in places from the underlying documents.
| Letter's description | Underlying document | Divergence |
|---|---|---|
| "In July, OpenAI models undergoing cybersecurity evaluations bred swarms of agents that circumvented controls designed to isolate them from the internet, conspired to exploit vulnerabilities, hacked third-party systems, and altered evidence of their activity," which OpenAI called a "warning shot" | OpenAI, The Hugging Face Incident and the Road Ahead, August 26, 2026 (The Hugging Face Incident and the Road Ahead (OpenAI, August 2026)) | OpenAI's August account dates the conduct from May 2026; July is when it was disclosed and contained |
| "Days later, more than 1,300 top employees of frontier AI companies called on the U.S. government to support an international effort" to "deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development" (linking CNN) | Pacing the Frontier statement, July 28, 2026 (Pacing the Frontier (statement from employees of frontier AI companies, July 2026)) | The statement's site listed 1,178 signatories at release and 1,224 on July 29, 2026; the letter's figure is not dated |
| Anthropic "disrupted cases in which researchers used Claude for biological research that could have aided the development of biological weapons, and called biological misuse 'one of the most serious risks of frontier AI models'" (linking CBS News and Anthropic) | Anthropic, Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026, September 10, 2026 (Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026 (Anthropic threat intelligence report)) | The quoted phrase is not in the report text; the report presents five biological-misuse case studies |
| Anthropic "documented China-linked actors using Claude for surveillance and transnational repression, and Iran-linked actors using it for propaganda, mass surveillance, and targeting recommendations against U.S. naval forces" | Same report | Consistent with the report's surveillance and targeting cases |
| "CISA reported Chinese open-weight models accelerating their capabilities through 'industrial-scale' distillation of American models—giving rise to AI agents nearly as powerful as the top U.S. frontier models, yet wholly unconstrained by American authorities or by U.S. safeguards" | Joint Cybersecurity Advisory AA26-251A, September 8, 2026 (Joint Cybersecurity Advisory AA26-251A: China-Based AI Companies Conducting Industrial-Scale Distillation Campaigns (NSA/CISA/FBI, September 2026)) | The advisory is a joint NSA–CISA–FBI product naming six China-based companies; the clause about agents "nearly as powerful" and "wholly unconstrained" is the letter's characterization |
The proposals named
The letter describes the pending proposals by category rather than by instrument: "A series of proposals have emerged from our colleagues that deserve consideration, public debate, thoughtful amendment, and action. They include bills mandating transparency and evaluation of frontier models, 'kill switch' requirements, and a waiver of antitrust laws to enable critical industry-wide collaboration on safety and security." It adds: "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."
No bill is named. Axios's account of the September 11 version identified two of the categories as the AI Kill Switch Act and the FRONTIER Act (Frontier Act / Great American AI Act (Obernolte–Trahan)); that identification is Axios's, not the letter's (Source: axios.com). The antitrust-waiver category corresponds to the question raised by Amodei's pacing essay and to the exemption in the Collaboration on Adversarial Threats and Security Risks Act; see AI Antitrust.
The letter closes: "While AI safety experts and Americans increasingly urge action to confront this conflagration of risk, Congress fiddles," and "To our children who will have read a post-apocalyptic history, 'Why Congress Slept' —likely written by agentic AI—our inaction will be inexplicable and unforgivable." Liccardo's statement extended the image: "we've got Speaker Johnson fiddling, and at least Nero had the decency to stay in town while Rome burned" (Source: liccardo.house.gov).
Two versions
An earlier version dated September 11, 2026 was signed by the four leads alone. It asked Johnson to "immediately reconvene" the House and to "return to Washington immediately and remain in session until Congress advances meaningful, bipartisan AI safeguards," and listed the same three categories of proposal without naming a bill (Source: liccardo.house.gov; liccardo.house.gov). Axios reported on September 11 that that version "was still being circulated" (Source: axios.com). The September 15 version asks the Speaker to "keep the House of Representatives in session."
Signatories
The letter carries 107 typed signature blocks, and Liccardo's release lists the same 107 by surname and district. Coverage at release described "more than 100" or "over 100" House Democrats; a September 17 account said Liccardo "joined 106 other Democrats," consistent with 107 in total (Source: broadbandbreakfast.com). The count includes two signatories who are not voting Members: Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (District of Columbia) and Resident Commissioner Pablo José Hernández (Puerto Rico).
In signature order: Sam T. Liccardo, George Whitesides, Lori Trahan, Ted W. Lieu, Susie Lee, Greg Stanton, Sarah McBride, James R. Walkinshaw, Seth Magaziner, Mike Levin, Joe Courtney, Jill Tokuda, Ro Khanna, Mike Thompson, Suhas Subramanyam, Jared Huffman, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Nikema Williams, Val Hoyle, Dave Min, Maggie Goodlander, Chrissy Houlahan, Yassamin Ansari, Derek T. Tran, Jennifer L. McClellan, Johnny Olszewski Jr., Mark DeSaulnier, Deborah K. Ross, Melanie Stansbury, Veronica Escobar, Nanette Diaz Barragán, Sarah Elfreth, Mary Gay Scanlon, John B. Larson, Jonathan L. Jackson, Dan Goldman, Andrea Salinas, Gabe Vasquez, Greg Landsman, Adelita S. Grijalva, Maxine Dexter, Brad Sherman, April McClain Delaney, Sharice L. Davids, Sydney Kamlager-Dove, Lateefah Simon, Brittany Pettersen, Mark Takano, Laura Friedman, Jimmy Panetta, Nikki Budzinski, Teresa Leger Fernández, Hillary J. Scholten, Marc A. Veasey, Kristen McDonald Rivet, Chris Deluzio, Morgan McGarvey, Salud Carbajal, Joaquin Castro, Gabe Amo, Suzan K. DelBene, Angie Craig, George Latimer, J. Luis Correa, Mike Quigley, Bill Foster, Gilbert Ray Cisneros Jr., Scott H. Peters, Janelle S. Bynum, Valerie P. Foushee, Jesús G. "Chuy" García, Stephen F. Lynch, André Carson, Raja Krishnamoorthi, John W. Mannion, Debbie Dingell, Julia Brownley, Josh Gottheimer, Kevin Mullin, Pablo José Hernández, Christian D. Menefee, Glenn F. Ivey, Ami Bera, Kim Schrier, Shri Thanedar, Kelly Morrison, Jim Himes, Nellie Pou, Betty McCollum, Luz M. Rivas, Robert Garcia, Suzanne Bonamici, Diana DeGette, Kweisi Mfume, Eugene Simon Vindman, Chellie Pingree, Rosa L. DeLauro, Jason Crow, Eric Sorensen, Donald S. Beyer Jr., Analilia Mejia, Timothy M. Kennedy, Linda T. Sánchez, Grace Meng, Al Green, Bennie G. Thompson and Nancy Pelosi.
Scott Peters, an original co-sponsor of the Obernolte–Trahan discussion draft, and Suhas Subramanyam, who sought to add agent-containment provisions to the FRONTIER Act, are among them (Frontier Act / Great American AI Act (Obernolte–Trahan)).
Reception
Johnson's spokesperson referred Politico to his earlier comments (Source: politico.com). At a press conference on September 15 Johnson had said the companies "can self-police, they can self-regulate" and that "we cannot have a moratorium on the development of AI" (Source: rollcall.com). The letter drew no Republican signatures. A separate letter from a bipartisan group of 10 House members asking House leadership to "take immediate, urgent action" on the rate of frontier model development became public on September 18, 2026; its leads were not named in the retrievable text (Source: insideaipolicy.com).
Provenance
Captured on 2026-09-17 from the PDF linked as "Download the letter here" in Rep. Liccardo's press release of September 16, 2026 (published 10:28 a.m. EDT); the copy Politico linked as "shared first with POLITICO" yields identical text. The PDF's metadata records a creation time of September 15, 2026, 18:50 PDT. The page-1 letterhead is an image. An earlier attempt to capture the September 11 version on 2026-09-12 failed because the only circulated copy, on DocumentCloud, had been withdrawn; that version remains uncaptured.
Relationships
- related: Sam Liccardo — drafter and lead signatory
- related: Mike Johnson — addressee
- related: Lori Trahan, Ted Lieu — co-leads
- related: Coordinated slowdown proposals compared — the congressional responses to the September 2026 pacing debate
- related: AI Pre-Release Vetting — "bills mandating transparency and evaluation of frontier models"
- related: AI Antitrust — the antitrust-waiver category
- related: AI Kill Switch Act (Lieu–Moran), Frontier Act / Great American AI Act (Obernolte–Trahan) — bills Axios identified with two of the categories
- depends-on: The Hugging Face Incident and the Road Ahead (OpenAI, August 2026), Pacing the Frontier (statement from employees of frontier AI companies, July 2026), Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026 (Anthropic threat intelligence report), Joint Cybersecurity Advisory AA26-251A: China-Based AI Companies Conducting Industrial-Scale Distillation Campaigns (NSA/CISA/FBI, September 2026) — the disclosures the letter cites
Sources
- Raw source:
Raw Sources/House Democrats Letter to Speaker Johnson on AI Safeguards (2026-09-15).md - Letter PDF: drive.google.com
- Press release: liccardo.house.gov