WASHINGTON — Amid warnings that artificial intelligence could soon wipe out humanity, some lawmakers are not confident that Congress has the expertise or ability to regulate AI.
Page A2From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 26 September 2026
Congress calls itself barely capable of email, invests personally in the AI it declines to regulate.
As it ran on the front
Congress held itself up this week as a body barely capable of email, and members meant it as an excuse, not a confession. NBC reported lawmakers doubting their own capacity to regulate artificial intelligence, and The Hill reported that the fight over how to do it is being pushed past the midterms — the House out of session, the Senate departing for a monthlong recess, the calendar simply full. That is the official story: an under-resourced legislature, overtaken by a technology moving faster than its members can read a briefing memo, buying itself time it needs.
The Hill ran its own list that same week of lawmakers to watch on AI policy, a roster that reads less like an oversight committee and less like a shareholder registry than both at once.…
…(cont) Set beside the September 13 warning from Jacob Coxon, the former Anthropic researcher who told NBC that Congress should let AI labs regulate themselves until lawmakers catch up, the sequence gets simpler, not more complicated. Congress is telling reporters it can barely open its inbox.
Here is the version nobody put in a press release. The Senate calendar is crowded, and the technology is moving fast — both true, both beside the point. At least 105 members hold the stock personally. That's — that's not the framing I was building toward. The point was capacity. The point is the portfolios.
The bill does not need Congress to learn a new technology. It needs those same 105 members to disclose what they already own, or step aside from the vote. Nothing about the inbox explains that. The portfolios do.
“They say Congress is barely capable of email, but at least 105 of them are plenty capable of holding AI stock while they explain why the bill has to wait. Eight days is what separated that investment count from the incapacity excuse — barely enough time to draft a press release, let alone forget you own the shares. You get the delay; the industry's own whistleblower got ignored asking them to hurry, and the vote still didn't move.”
“Look, you want a Congress that actually understands the technology before it regulates it — that's just responsible governance, that's due diligence, that's — I mean, the calendar's the real problem, the Senate's got a recess coming and — okay, and also at least 105 members happen to hold the stock, but that's not why the vote hasn't happened. That's — that's not what I meant to say.”
The receipts
{beacon} Technology Technology The Big Story Who to watch in Congress on AI policy Fears over artificial intelligence’s rapid development sent Congress into a tailspin this week, as dozens of lawmakers joined the debate on how to regulate the technology. © Greg Nash The frenzy in Washington has included policymakers who have long…
The debate over how to regulate artificial intelligence is being pushed past the November midterms, frustrating some lawmakers who warn that Congress is running out of time to address the rapidly evolving technology. With the House out of session and the Senate facing a crowded agenda before it departs for a monthlong recess, lawmakers…
Despite increasingly urgent calls to regulate artificial intelligence, including from industry insiders who warn of potentially catastrophic consequences, the US Congress has continued to drag its feet on meaningful legislation. A report released Friday by Sludge may shed some light on one potential roadblock. It found that 1 in 5…
Progressive Democrats are jockeying to shape the Democratic Party’s approach to artificial intelligence, pushing for heavy restrictions on the rapidly developing industry. The hard-left wing of the Democratic Party has been sharply critical of the AI industry’s rapid, largely unregulated growth, warning that the risks of the technology…
“A 10-year-old child has just been struck by an illegal dirt bike. He’s in critical condition. The group of all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes is headed north.
· Anthropic whistleblower says Congress should let AI companies regulate themselves until a regulatory body is established from the morgue, 13 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.