Press Releases

This weekend, Congresswoman Lori Trahan (MA-03), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee penned an op-ed in CommonWealth Beacon making the case that Congress cannot afford to wait for a crisis before establishing guardrails on the most powerful AI systems, drawing a direct line from the manufacturing jobs that vanished from the Merrimack Valley she represents to the disruption AI now threatens to unleash on America’s workers, national security, and cyber infrastructure.

“After decades of offshoring and automation hollowing out American manufacturing, the workers left behind in Haverhill didn’t need a study to tell them what was coming. They needed Congress to act years before they got handed pink slips,” Congresswoman Trahan wrote. “On artificial intelligence, we still have a chance to move before similar damage is done, but that window is closing faster than most people realize.”

Trahan points to Anthropic's Mythos model, which was deemed too dangerous for public release after it proved capable of identifying thousands of vulnerabilities across major operating systems and browsers. Despite warning signs like these, she notes, there is no federal law governing how the most powerful AI systems are built, tested, or deployed, no independent auditing of frontier labs' safety claims, and no federal agency with clear authority to step in to prevent a catastrophic event.

She goes on to describe what a potential bipartisan federal framework can and should include:

1. Frontier Accountability: Require the largest AI companies to publish and comply with safety frameworks, submit to third-party audits, and ensure whistleblowers are protected.
2. Independent verification: Accredit private auditing organizations to embed within frontier labs and call in enforcers when companies fall short of safety and transparency requirements.
3. Protections for American Workers: Update WARN Act requirements so employers must disclose when AI drives a mass layoff, enable real-time tracking of AI impacts on the workforce, and prompt Congress to act proactively to support American workers rather than job training after the damage is done.
4. Strengthened Cyber Defenses: Include funding for open-source maintainers and reauthorize the threat-sharing framework that lets companies flag risks without antitrust exposure.

Trahan also addresses the federalism question head-on, arguing that serious governance concentrates oversight at the frontier and elevates the strongest state provisions into a federal standard focused on model development, while explicitly preserving states' ability to protect residents from AI systems that discriminate, deceive, or endanger.

“I cannot go back to Haverhill, look a worker, a parent, or a recent graduate in the eyes, and tell them that we saw what was coming and decided to wait for a more opportune moment,” Congresswoman Trahan continued. “Congress must act for the workers, the families, and the communities that cannot afford for us to get this wrong. Again.”

The full op-ed is available at CommonWealth Beacon: https://commonwealthbeacon.org/opinion/congress-must-act-now-on-ai/