Thune wants a light-touch AI bill as Trump calls guardrails a conspiracy

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters on 14 September that Congress can put guardrails around the most serious risks from advanced AI models without harming the United States in a race with China. He called the approach a "light touch."

The South Dakota Republican said he is working toward a bipartisan bill with Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Cruz and Senator Amy Klobuchar. He spoke with Klobuchar on Saturday night. Cruz has described the talks as focused on catastrophic biological and nuclear risks. Klobuchar said in a statement that she wants developers to work with government experts to verify and test models.

A Senate aide and a lobbyist familiar with the talks told Reuters the draft under discussion would require AI companies to show they are taking reasonable precautions against harm, a duty of care the commerce secretary could enforce. The secretary would also be able to send government auditors to test products and, in the version described to Reuters, to stop the release of a model. The same account said the bill would override state AI laws. No text has been published. Reuters could not say what would count as "reasonable."

The White House line on the same day

President Donald Trump used a 14 September Truth Social post and a live call into the All-In Summit in Los Angeles to reject new statutory limits. He called talk of AI guardrails a conspiracy and said existing criminal and regulatory power is enough. He named Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei. During a panel, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang took the call on stage. Trump told the room that efforts to slow development were politically motivated or a Chinese scheme.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, speaking on CNN the day before, said companies should write their own safety protocols and that Congress should not fast-track a statute. He floated the idea of putting lawmakers, the president and executives in a room. He did not commit to a vote.

The calendar is short. The House is due to leave by the end of the week. The Senate is considering cutting a three-week sitting to two before the 3 November midterms. Commerce delayed a markup in July because the bill lacked enough Democratic votes. Cruz cancelled another session before the August recess to clear child-safety legislation.

What the 2023 draft already contained

Thune and Klobuchar first wrote the Artificial Intelligence Research, Innovation, and Accountability Act in 2023. The update now in circulation would tell the Commerce Department to issue testing standards for "critical-impact" systems and tell the National Institute of Standards and Technology to give each relevant agency sector-specific advice.

That is a narrower project than a general licensing regime. It is still more than Trump is offering. The president's position, restated on 14 September, is that the executive already has the tools and that new rules would serve a rival. Thune's position is that frontier models carry "consequential risks," that some of the public conversation is a worst-case script, and that a limited statute can sit between those two claims.

Jacob Coxon, a former researcher at OpenAI and Anthropic, had said neither lab was acting responsibly and that both were racing toward self-improving systems. Amodei's weekend essay arguing for a slower frontier is what triggered the week's market drop in AI stocks and SoftBank. Thune treated that alarm as a reason to keep writing a bill, not as a reason to accept the strongest version of the risk.

The fight that is not in the quotes

Three questions are still open inside the talks. Who runs the safety tests, the labs or federal auditors. How far a blocking power would reach, and how a company would challenge it in court. How much of the existing state AI statutes the federal bill would wipe out.

Until a text is public, those questions are lobbyist descriptions, not law. What is on the record is simpler. Thune, Cruz and Klobuchar are still negotiating. Trump has said he does not want a new statute. The House calendar has days, not months, before the midterms.