Sept. 16 (UPI) — Speaker of the House Mike Johnson announced Wednesday that he will cancel the House session set for Thursday, starting a seven-week recess early and further shortening an already reduced legislative session.
This will avoid a vote on a resolution calling for the impeachment of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The resolution, which introduced eight articles of impeachment, was introduced Tuesday by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.
However, staffers said other votes that were expected Thursday, including overturning some Environment Protection Agency regulations, would take place Wednesday evening, Politico reported.
More than 100 House Democrats on Wednesday co-signed a letter calling for Johnson to cancel the recess so the House can vote on legislation creating artificial intelligence safeguards.
Rep. Sam Liccardo, D-Calif., was one of those involved in the letter, as were Reps. George Whitesides, D-Calif.; Ted Lieu, D-Calif.; and Lori Trahan, D-Mass.
“While we’re seeing this firestorm of concern throughout the country around AI safety, we’ve got Speaker Johnson fiddling, and at least Nero had the decency to stay in town while Rome burned,” Liccardo said in a statement.”Speaker Mike Johnson is shutting down Congress for seven weeks. The American people need action, not vacation.”
In the letter to Johnson, Democrats said Congress should “take urgent action to address the catastrophic risks posed by advanced artificial intelligence.”
“Reasonable minds may disagree about precisely how Congress should regulate this rapidly evolving technology,” the letter said. “We cannot disagree about the imperative for Congress to act.
“Instead of action, you have announced vacation.”
On Sept. 3, Republican leaders had announced that they were canceling the final two weeks of this legislative session, meaning the session was to end Thursday instead of Oct. 1. House members are to return Nov. 9, after Election Day, which is Nov. 3.
Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay saying AI developers risk “losing control of AI systems.”
A few days before that, a former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher said in his resignation letter from Anthropic that AI companies are not “acting responsibly” and that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
President Donald Trump dismissed the concerns about AI on Tuesday, saying they are part of a “SICK conspiracy.” Trump said the only control AI needs is a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT!”
Source: U.S. News
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