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bernie sanders
'Outrageous': Sanders Slams FCC for Approving Saudi and UAE Ownership of Paramount-Warner Bros.
"We don't need Middle East dictators to control American media."
Sep 18, 2026
US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday joined a growing chorus of critics angered by the Federal Communications Commission's approval of foreign investment in the company that would be created if Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery are allowed to merge.
Led by Chair Brendan Carr, an appointee of President Donald Trump, the FCC on Thursday approved Paramount's petition to allow foreign investors to hold over 25% of ownership. The commission concluded it would be in the "public interest" to greenlight a plan for 49.5% foreign ownership, including 38.5% from investment funds based in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
"Trump's FCC just approved Trump pal David Ellison's deal to allow Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE to own nearly 50% of a merged Paramount-Warner Bros," Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote on social media Friday, referring to Paramount's chair and CEO—and the son of billionaire Republican megadonor Larry Ellison.
The merged company would include CBS, CNN, HBO, the Discovery Channel, BET, Fandango, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount, PlutoTV, Showtime, TBS, The CW, TNT, Warner Bros., and more, the senator noted. He added: "Outrageous: We don't need Middle East dictators to control American media."
Anna Gomez, the sole Democratic commissioner, was similarly critical: "The FCC just let some of the most repressive governments in the world indirectly control nearly all of a combined Paramount-Warner Bros. An investment this large in one of America's biggest media companies doesn't just buy equity, it secures influence over what gets said and made."
"That's why I called for this new and novel issue to go to a full commission vote given what's at stake," she noted. "Instead, the FCC snuck this ruling out as a staff-level decision, with no public vote and no accountability for a call of this magnitude."
Welcoming Gomez's comments, Michael Sozan pointed to his and Andrew Miller's June article for the Center for American Progress highlighting that "the three Middle Eastern authoritarian regimes have deep financial relationships with Trump and his family, and... long records of human rights abuses and engage in media censorship."
"These autocracies could leverage Paramount's news outlets and other media properties to advance their own interests at the expense of the United States' national security and foundational rights, including press freedoms," the pair warned. "Given these factors, these foreign ownership levels are another reason why regulators must rigorously review this merger and take all lawful actions to block it."
As the Los Angeles Times reported:
Several groups, including the 1st Amendment nonprofit Free Press, asked the FCC to consider additional safeguards to shield the news organizations—CNN and CBS—from foreign control. One suggestion was to spin off CBS and CNN into a subsidiary that would be wholly owned by Americans.
Paramount and the FCC were dismissive, arguing "the concerns raised in the record... are speculative and unsupported," according to the FCC ruling.
While a Paramount spokesperson welcomed the FCC's decision not to block the plan—and pointed out that "when the proposed transaction with Warner Bros. Discovery closes, the Ellison family and RedBird will collectively hold the largest equity stake in the combined company and 100% of the voting shares, with no other equity participant having any governance rights"—fresh outrage mounted over the already widely criticized $111 billion merger.
Lee Hepner, an antitrust lawyer and senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project, addressed the questions: "But it's just indirect equity interests, right? What about the condition that the Saudis, UAE, and Qatar cannot interfere with or even comment on any decisions related to content?"
As he explained: "The only way that firewall is conceivably enforceable is if the FCC assigns an independent monitor to sit in on every meeting, taps every burner phone, and is invited to every Signal chat between any representative of Paramount and its new financial backers. The point is not that that should happen, but that this condition is patently unenforceable. Which is all to say, the FCC just approved the sale of a crown jewel of the entertainment and media industry to foreign interests that relish in exercising economic, political, and regional military leverage over the United States. All based on a pinky promise."
"The reality is that ownership alone, even of nonvoting, indirect equity interests, creates its own financial leverage and influence," he warned. "To the extent Paramount's new owners are prohibited from exercising influence, it's patently paradoxical. Paramount won't approve anything that risks losing half of its financial backing, including criticizing a regime that not too long ago ordered the execution of a Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, who became an international figurehead for politically persecuted journalists."
"Does anyone think CBS' new leadership has the will, much less fortitude, to prioritize truth over financial ruin?" he added. "If this all sounds like a total mess, that's because it is. And it only becomes doubly worse if Paramount acquires Warner Bros.-Discovery."
Due to legal pushback from state attorneys general and unions, the merger—which some opponents have condemned as an "existential" threat—is on hold until the outcome of a trial scheduled to begin in March.
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Markey, Merkley, and Sanders Lead Charge Against Trump's $5 Billion Saudi Weapons Deal
The effort comes as senators also sound the alarm about a possible nuclear energy agreement and the administration continues to greenlight arms sales to the kingdom.
Sep 18, 2026
A trio of progressive US senators this week introduced legislation to block a $5 billion conventional weapons sale to Saudi Arabia while also pushing for the release of more details about President Donald Trump's proposed nuclear cooperation agreement with the Middle Eastern kingdom.
"The United States must not send thousands of conventional weapons to Saudi Arabia or allow it to develop a nuclear program," said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in a Thursday statement—a day after he partnered with Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to introduce the joint resolution of disapproval, which was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"I am deeply concerned by the kingdom's human rights abuses, the security of the region as the war in Iran rages on, and the proxy war that is escalating between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Yemen," Markey explained. "Further escalation in the Saudi-Iran proxy war will worsen an already dire humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen and risks setting off a nuclear arms race between Iran and Saudi Arabia."
The resolution targets a sale approved by the US State Department on September 4 that includes over 10,000 joint direct attack munition (JDAM) guidance kits. As Breaking Defense detailed, "The prospective transaction includes a similar number of dumb bombs—split almost evenly between 500 lb. and 2,000 lb. munitions—which, when equipped with a JDAM, can be used as a precision weapon."
The bill does not apply to the other possible sale to Saudi Arabia endorsed by the department that same day—$750 million for AGT-1500 engines and related equipment—or the $24.3 billion deal for F-35 Lightning II fighter jets, which the Trump administration greenlit Thursday, after the resolution was introduced.
The latest approval "comes nearly two months after Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman traveled to Washington to lobby senior Trump administration officials on the sale, with Riyadh hoping to advance the deal ahead of the midterms," Semafor noted. The upcoming US elections could lead to Trump's Republican Party losing control of Congress.
The warplanes sale could also face pushback from Congress. According to Politico, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, warned that "it could put the crown jewels of American military technology within reach of the Chinese Communist Party."
US approves $24.3 billion sale of 48 F-35 stealth warplanes to Saudi Arabia.US intelligence analysts have raised the possibility that China could acquire F-35 technology through its partnerships with Saudi. Israel had been the only country in the Middle East to operate the jetsu.afp.com/SjRn
[image or embed]
— AFP News Agency (@en.afp.com) September 17, 2026 at 9:41 PM
In addition to unveiling their resolution about the JDAMs and bombs on Wednesday, Markey and Merkley, co-chairs of the bicameral Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, led a bipartisan group of senators—including Sanders—in urging a pair of Trump Cabinet members to declassify two side letters associated with the administration's proposed nuclear deal.
The administration submitted the pending 30-year agreement—which would allow US companies to share nuclear power technology with the kingdom—to Congress after it was signed by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman in July.
Under Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act, Congress has 90 days of continuous session to review the deal and either move to block it or let it take effect. The senators' new letter to Wright and Secretary of State Marco Rubio notes that "in previous 123 agreements, the executive branch publicly released the agreement along with side letters and related documents."
"Access to the full text is required for the Senate and the public to have a clear understanding of the commitments being made on the nation's behalf and those being made by Saudi Arabia to the United States," the senators argued. "Their public release would also allow civil society, independent experts, and other affected stakeholders to scrutinize the deal."
"Transparency and open debate are cornerstones of our democracy," they emphasized. "Congress and the American public must have a meaningful opportunity to review and debate the key components of the US-Saudi nuclear deal before it potentially enters into force. To that end, we call on you to declassify and release the two side letters without delay."
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We Will Reach Our Improved Medicare For All Destination If We All Do Our Part
Everyone who wants Improved Medicare for All to become law should reach out to friends, family, and neighbors and urge them to get involved and we should create Improved Medicare for All clubs nationwide to galvanize this movement.
Sep 18, 2026
Editor’s Note: The following is the fifth and final excerpt from Nancy J. Altman’s new book, The Road to Medicare for All: A Call to Action (Routledge, 2026), now available for purchase wherever quality books are sold. Read the previous excerpts published by Common Dreams here, here, here, and here. As the United States continues to spend substantially more on health care than other wealthy nations but with poorer health outcomes, Altman’s book analyzes the dysfunction of the current system and sets forth the solution. “Medicare for All won’t happen without a fight,” she argues, “but it is a fight we can win.”
Reaching our destination won’t be easy. Americans have been fighting for universal, government-sponsored national health insurance for over 100 years. Progress was made in 1965 and 1972, when Medicare was enacted and expanded. Since, then, though, not only was Medicare not expanded; frustratingly, its opposition has succeeded in partially privatizing it.
The moment in which the nation finds itself does not appear particularly hopeful even for the country to remain the United States. Not since the Civil War has the nation been so divided.
Past Threats to Democracy
Almost 100 years ago, the Great Depression brought economic collapse and with it, a serious threat to democracy. Like today, there was hostility to those perceived to be elites. The economic turmoil opened the door to widespread radical movements and demagogues.
Like today, “others” were scapegoated, along with the “elites.” Jews were a particular target. One extremely powerful, influential anti-Semite was radio preacher Father Charles E. Coughlin. At the height of his popularity, his Sunday radio show, Golden Hour of the Little Flower, which was broadcast over dozens of radio stations around the country, was heard by nearly one in four Americans and had a larger share of the listening audience than the more recent broadcasters Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, Paul Harvey, and Larry King put together. Before the 1936 Presidential election, he asserted. “This is our last election. It is fascism or communism. We are at the crossroads. I take the road to fascism.”
Another leader of the time seeking radical change was Louisiana Governor and then Senator Huey Long, who targeted the extreme income and wealth inequality which exploded during the so-called Roaring Twenties. His Share Our Wealth plan proposed confiscatory income, wealth, and inheritance taxes on the wealthiest and generous federal benefits for working and middle-income families. Just one year after announcing the plan, there were 27,000 Share Our Wealth local clubs, mainly in the South, with over 7.5 million members.
Long planned to run for president as a third-party candidate, even setting out his plans and strategy in his 1935 novel, My First Days in the White House. His plans came to an abrupt end, though, in September, 1935, when he was assassinated by the son-in-law of a political opponent whom Long had targeted and slandered.
Another radical leader of the time was socialist author and journalist, Upton Sinclair, who sought to expose corruption in business and government, while shining a spotlight on the horrendous working conditions at the time. In 1934, he ran for Governor of California on his “End Poverty in California” (EPIC) plan, which, like Long, he set out in a novel, the 1933 I, Governor of California, and How I Ended Poverty: A True Story of the Future. His plan called for the state to seize idle factories, farms, movie studios, and other businesses and convert them to worker-run co-ops, financed with progressive revenue. Two dozen candidates who ran on the EPIC plan won seats in the state legislature, including lawyer and journalist Culbert Colson, who successfully ran for Governor four years later, becoming the first Democrat in 40 years to win the office.
The Perfect Person for the Moment
At base, people were suffering and open to radical solutions to address their misery. Franklin Roosevelt was undoubtedly the right person to meet that moment. He was extremely politically savvy, pragmatic, and smart. His speeches were inspiring and visionary. His famed fireside chats, named to convey a sense of cozy familiarity, established a strong personal connection between the president and the American people. He radiated optimism. Perhaps most importantly, he exuded compassion and empathy.
Though he enjoyed extraordinary wealth and privilege, his paralysis, resulting from contracting polio at age 39, was apparently transformative. His close colleague Frances Perkins, who became the first woman to serve as a Cabinet secretary to a president, described his transformation in her book, The Roosevelt I Knew. She witnessed Roosevelt undergo, she wrote:
“a spiritual transformation during the years of his illness….The man emerged completely warmhearted, with humility of spirit and with a deeper philosophy. Having been in the depths of trouble, he understood the problems of people in trouble.”
The brilliant achievements of the charismatic Roosevelt can continue to be felt today. His Social Security program was carefully crafted to embody basic American values, containing both progressive and conservative elements that continue to appeal to Americans across the ideological divide. Roosevelt’s legacy provides good news in today’s troubling time. As polarized and hostile as Americans are in general, we are overwhelmingly united in our support for Social Security and Medicare, which grows out of Roosevelt’s legacy. A 2025 Bipartisan Policy Center poll, for example, found that 91 percent of Americans believe that Medicare is valuable. That same poll found that 93 percent believe Social Security is valuable. Numerous other polls, taken over many years by groups across the ideological spectrum, have found similar results of unanimity of support.
Despite how divided and combative the American people are generally, these numbers provide a ray of hope. Supporters of Improved Medicare for All must build on this support systematically. The cause and its success may have the byproduct of helping to bring the country back to more normal, less fractured, and hostile times.
Today’s Missing Leader
Notwithstanding Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, none of the Democratic presidential nominees in the last few election cycles nor the mainstream leaders of today’s Democratic Party appear to match Roosevelt’s political insights or capabilities. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) showed that he can garner enthusiastic support, as has New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, but the Democratic leadership has not embraced them or similar charismatic progressive leaders. Consequently, the Democratic Party has not spoken with one single clear voice and capitalized effectively on the broad support for Medicare and Social Security.
Unfortunately, unlike Roosevelt, the current politicians who appear most likely to win the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination do not appear to have the vision or charisma to capitalize on the popularity of Medicare and Social Security. There is no candidate with Franklin Roosevelt’s many gifts who is in a position to fully embrace Improved Medicare for All and ride it to victory, together with an expanded Social Security program. At this moment, the Democratic Party does not seem united in a path forward, certainly not one that would embrace as bold a vision as Improved Medicare for All.
Nevertheless, the political movements of the 1930s provide evidence that those policy goals can be achieved without a political leader. While the Share the Wealth and End Poverty in California grassroots movements had high-profile personalities leading the efforts, another astoundingly successful grassroots movement did not.
A Grassroots Movement to Emulate
While policymakers in Washington were primarily focused on unemployment in the early years of the Great Depression, they apparently did not fully appreciate that hidden in the shadows of the unemployment numbers were impoverished, aged parents reluctantly dependent on their adult children for support. When Social Security became law in 1935, every state but New Mexico had poorhouses (sometimes called almshouses or poor farms). The vast majority of the residents were elderly. Most of the “inmates,” as they were often labeled, entered the poorhouse late in life, having been independent wage earners until they were no longer able to work.
Although official Washington was not focused on the plight of the elderly, ordinary people were. In September 1933, a Long Beach, California doctor, Francis E. Townsend, found himself at age 66 unemployed with no savings. He was gazing out his window when he spotted two elderly women, dressed in rags, rummaging through his garbage, searching for anything edible. It so upset Dr. Townsend that he sent a letter to the Long Beach Press-Telegram, his local newspaper.
His letter, published on September 30, proposed a plan. He proposed that the federal government provide every person aged 60 or older a pension of $200 per month, a princely sum in the 1930s. The only requirement, in addition to being retired and not a criminal, was that the recipient had to spend every penny within 30 days of receipt. He claimed that his plan would not only eradicate old-age poverty; it would so stimulate the economy that it would create jobs and end the Depression.
The idea spread around the country at a rate astonishing to believe in that pre-Internet, pre-social media world. A year after Townsend wrote his letter to the newspaper, Time magazine reported in its October 15, 1934, issue:
By last week the flow of money…was enough to pay the wages of 50 people….There were Townsend Clubs in every State except Delaware…. Between 2,000,000 and 5,000,000 people had put their names to petitions begging their Congressmen to vote the Plan into effect at once.
Even in the short time between the publication of Townsend’s letter and the establishment of Roosevelt’s Committee on Economic Security (CES), his interagency task force to develop the Social Security Act, supporters of the Townsend proposal were exerting considerable pressure on the Administration and Congress. At the height of CES’s work, mail from Townsendites averaged about 1,500 letters a day. In some congressional districts, a candidate’s position on the Townsend plan determined the outcome of the election.
By mid-October 1934, Townsend had acquired two million signatures on petitions urging congressional action on his plan. Just three months later, he was claiming to have 25 million signatures. The number of Townsend clubs had climbed to 25,000 across the country. The plan’s popularity was not hard to fathom. As political columnist, Mark Sullivan with The New York Herald Tribune explained: “The zeal of those promoting the plan is evangelical, almost fanatic.”
A Time magazine piece explained the political climate surrounding the plan:
The good doctor’s Old Age Revolving Pensions scheme, better known as the Townsend Plan, had by last week become one of the biggest political facts in the US. The early California groundswell of sentiment in its favor had grown to a tidal wave, battering at nearly every door in House and Senate Office Buildings.
In the end, the Townsend plan, which policy experts understood to be unworkable—benefits would have cost half the income of the United States, for example—was instrumental in enacting Social Security, because it provided the widespread pressure to address old age insecurity. That is the kind of pressure that today could get Improved Medicare for All enacted, as well.
A New Movement: Improved Medicare for All Clubs All across the Nation
To build such a movement is both easier and harder than it was almost 100 years ago. While American news consumption is much more siloed, social media, email chains, and the internet generally allow people to connect much more easily and effectively. Of course, people are drawn to a variety of important issues, including climate change, gun violence, and immigration. Nevertheless, similar to the 1930s with respect to old age insecurity, Americans appear to be reaching the end of their rope with respect to the nation’s health insurance companies, as was demonstrated by the strong, instantaneous outpouring of frustration with commercial health insurance in response to the murder of the UnitedHealthcare executive.
The movement for Improved Medicare for All already has powerful, effective, knowledgeable and resourceful leaders. They are members of a far-reaching, forceful coalition, the National Coalition for Medicare for All. The coalition meets regularly to strategize and advance the issue. They are doing a spectacular job in championing and pushing forward Improved Medicare for All. To help them succeed in its enactment, the rest of us should provide them with an overwhelming army of passionate, dedicated grassroots supporters.
The goal, as impossible as it might seem, is to build a broad-based, energized, and determined Townsend-like grassroots movement. Everyone who wants Improved Medicare for All to become law should reach out to friends, family, and neighbors and urge them to get involved. In addition to joining already-existing groups, such as MoveOn, Public Citizen, and Indivisible, supporters should create Improved Medicare for All clubs.
Those clubs should play a number of roles. First, the clubs could educate members and others about why Improved Medicare for All is so important. They could discuss at club meetings how health care is a right, not a privilege and how Improved Medicare for All is the only realistic way to get us there. Just as the Townsend clubs hounded their elected representatives, supporters should flood offices with phone calls, keep track of when their Senators and representatives are home from Washington, DD, and attend their town halls if they host them. If they don’t, the clubs can seek meetings with their members and staff. If their members won’t commit to cosponsoring Improved Medicare for All legislation, they should put pressure on them, including picketing their offices.
Other Steps Individuals Can and Should Take
With or without membership in an Improved Medicare for All club, those wanting to help the effort have many other steps they can take. On this and many other issues, there are a multitude of effective civic and social organizations active on political issues, such as Indivisible, MoveOn, Public Citizen, and many more. If you have access to a union, they remain extremely important and effective actors with which to engage. With or without engagement with these organizations, it is perhaps most important to educate family, friends, and neighbors. Writing letters to the editor and posting on social media are helpful actions. If possible, there may be an opportunity to hold an event at a school, perhaps through the PTA, as well as at assisted care facilities, libraries, and other spaces. If you want to organize an event but want experts to be the speakers and/or panelists, that is relatively easy these days, particularly, if the speakers can appear virtually.
Moreover, because healthcare costs affect everyone, the issue of Improved Medicare for All can be tailored to a variety of organizations and groups. School groups may be concerned about the impact of healthcare costs on their budget. Women’s groups may be concerned about reproductive rights. Again, the point is to make the movement for Improved Medicare for All as large a mass movement as possible.
This moment in history may make enactment of Improved Medicare for All appear as far away as it possibly could be. However, the mythological phoenix should be the symbol of the effort. The phoenix, an immortal bird that continually arose from the ashes of its predecessor, symbolizes renewal after a period of hardship.
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'F*ck the Consultants': Free Advice Offered for Democrats in Need of a Position on AI
"Wild that candidates are avoiding an enormously consequential issue with broad bipartisan support among voters, for fear of unleashing attack ads from super PACs funded by a tiny handful of AI billionaires and corporations."
Sep 18, 2026
A veteran aide for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has some choice advice for Democrats running for office in this year's election, which is to ignore the guidance some of them are reportedly receiving from their political consultants on the question of regulating the artificial intelligence industry in the face of growing public concerns about runaway machine learning and the data center buildout that big tech companies are pursuing nationwide.
Warren Gunnels, who currently serves as the minority staff director for Sanders on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee in the US Senate, issued his advice in response to a Politico article published Thursday, which had the headline "Democratic advisers are warning their candidates not to go too hard at AI."
While the reporting noted that members of the Democratic Party's consultancy class are "privately encouraging their battleground candidates to avoid talking about AI regulations out of fear that powerful tech groups will unleash a tidal wave of spending against them" ahead of this year's midterm election, Gunnels offered a 9-word antidote to what he considered bad political advice and a failure to recognize where most voters are on the issue.
"Nine words," said Gunnels in his post: "Fuck the consultants, End Citizens United, Ban super PACs." Gunnels backed up his statement with recent polling data suggesting that a strong stance on AI and data centers would likely help, not hurt, those seeking elected office.
Gunnels wasn't the only one to react negatively.
Brendan Fischer, director of strategic investigations at the Campaign Legal Center, said it's "wild that candidates are avoiding an enormously consequential issue with broad bipartisan support among voters, for fear of unleashing attack ads from super PACs funded by a tiny handful of AI billionaires and corporations."
The US Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in the Citizens United case, which unleashed a tidal wave of dark money campaign spending, said Fischer, "promised unlimited political spending would mean more speech and a more robust marketplace of ideas. But instead, candidates are chilled from discussing issues voters care about for fear of angering wealthy interests capable of spending millions to defeat them."
In July, Business Insider reported that the AI industry had already spent at least $65 million in midterm races, though other estimates have put that figure much higher. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, CEO of Space X and a major player in the AI space with his GROK model, has vowed to spend a $100 million help his preferred candidates and the Republican Party win.
At a summit on the need for robust regulation of the AI industry held earlier this week, Sanders said he had a message for leaders and executives running theses tech companies.
"My message to the AI CEO’s: If you truly care about the future of humanity," said Sanders, "stop pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into super PACs to defeat Members of Congress and candidates who are fighting for serious guardrails on AI."
My message to the AI CEO’s:
If you truly care about the future of humanity, stop pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into super PACs to defeat Members of Congress and candidates who are fighting for serious guardrails on AI. pic.twitter.com/2HooEeOQr3
— Sen. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) September 15, 2026
As the debate over AI regulation has emerged as a major topic in Washington, DC, and on the campaign trail in recent weeks, a series of polls have confirmed public anxieties about the technology.
A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago released Wednesday showed that more than half of US voters (53%) are “extremely” or “very” concerned about artificial intelligence’s environmental impacts, and the poll also found broader concerns about the negative impacts of data centers, especially on local water resources and utility rates.
"Change is scary, and I think some of that is being reflected here,” said Michael Greenstone, who directs the University of Chicago institute that collaborated on the survey, of the results.
The Politico reporting, which drew Gunnel's fiery response, also acknowledged the public sentiment, but described how consultants working on various Democratic campaigns are trying to avoid provoking the ire of deep-pocketed tech giants:
Some top Democratic candidates and their campaigns are quietly trying to avoid crossing any red lines for tech super PACs — even as it’s unclear exactly what those lines would be, after Musk and two of the biggest AI CEOs called for more regulation on the technology last week.Democrats are especially wary of Leading the Future, a pro-AI industry super PAC that spent over $25 million in primary races this year and is backed by investors and executives of OpenAI. The rival super PAC network, Public First Action, pushes for AI regulation and is funded by OpenAI’s chief competitor, Anthropic.
While the fears of being targeted by the industry cash may not be unfounded, progressives like Gunnels suggest that a willingness to take a stand against powerful AI companies is exactly the kind of fight voters want to see from party candidates.
For the Politico article, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the House, explained how AI super PACs "come out and they say that they’re concerned, that they want regulation. But then they spend huge amounts of money on defeating anybody who wants legislative regulation."
In a social media post Thursday night, however, Jayapal backed the congressional campaign of Will Lawrence, running as a Democrat to win an open seat in Michigan's 7th Congressional District, by saying voters "need leaders who answer to their constituents, not the corporations that paid for their election."
Following Gunnels advice that bucking the influence of corporate donors is actually a key component of a winning electoral strategy in the 2026 midterms, Jayapal said "electing fighters who don’t take corporate PAC money"—whether on the issue of AI, healthcare, housing policy, or broader concerns about economic inequality and affordability—is key for Democrats.
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Poll Shows 63% of Americans Fear AI Could End Humanity as Industry 'Corruption' Called Out
"We need to pump the brakes until we have rules in place to stop this technology from doing grave harm," says Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen. "And that includes instituting mandatory safeguards and a comprehensive testing regime."
Sep 16, 2026
A new poll released Wednesday shows that nearly two out of three Americans believe there is "certain" to "moderate" risk that artificial intelligence could wipe out human society, a finding that backs up other surveys showing deep anxiety among the US voting public with a technology that so far has escaped government oversight or meaningful regulation.
According to Politico, which conducted the survey, "63% of Americans say AI could destroy humanity one day. And nearly half of Americans favor pausing development of more advanced AI models—48%—compared with 31% who favor continued development."
The findings, the news outlet noted, "signal an emerging tech-skeptical realignment of American politics with consequential midterm and presidential elections looming" and arrive just a day after a major symposium in Washington, DC brought together experts and lawmakers who say action must be taken before its too late.
In a separate Associated Press poll published Wednesday, US voters also expressed their concerns about the negative environmental impact of the AI industry, including the massive buildout of data centers that serve as the main infrastructure for the computing capacity needed by the major tech firms, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, SpaceX, and others.
AP reports that while Democrats are more concerned overall about the environmental impacts of AI, large segments of independents and Republicans share those sentiments.
"About two-thirds of Democrats," AP reports, "say they are 'extremely' or 'very' concerned about how AI will affect the environment, the poll found, up from about half in 2025. By contrast, about half of independents and about 4 in 10 Republicans are highly concerned about the environmental impact of AI."
Broader consensus emerged on data centers, the outlet noted, with about 60% of all voters—regardless of partisan affiliation—supporting limits on new data centers and sharing concerns about the impact such facilities will have on local water supplies and electricity prices.
The new survey data from both AP and Politico comes amid a high-profile debate in Washington, DC that has emerged over recent weeks and months as grave warnings—including from experts within the industry—tell of a technology that demands much more government control and public accountability.
At a forum on Tuesday billed as "The Pro-Human Assembly"—headlined by progressive champion Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and far-right former Trump advisor Steve Bannon—technological experts, AI industry insiders, watchdogs, and lawmakers advocated for a much more robust and critical response to the issue.
“Despite living in a so-called democracy, the public has had virtually no input into the AI revolution that is transforming the world in which they live,” Sanders said during his remarks at the event.
“Congress, under both Democratic and Republican control, has been asleep at the wheel, and we now have a president whose ignorance regarding this issue is truly embarrassing," added Sanders. "Virtually all of the decisions regarding the development of AI have been made by a handful of the richest people in the world... whose chief goal is to achieve even more wealth and more power than they already have, no matter what the impact their work has on ordinary people."
In a video posted to social media on Tuesday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) also demanded a shift in Congress, which has for too long stood idly by as the AI industry lobby plowed tens of millions of dollars into shaping the terms of debate on Capitol Hill and bankrolling political campaigns.
"The ongoing AI threat has been enabled by political corruption," Van Hollen warned in his post.
The ongoing AI threat has been enabled by political corruption.
The Trump admin isn't asleep at the wheel; their refusal to address these risks is part of an implicit deal.
We should pump the brakes on frontier AI development & confront a corrupt system that's endangering us… pic.twitter.com/B9KPOgHrdY
— Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) September 16, 2026
"The people building this technology are concerned about the loss of human control," Van Hollen said. "We need to pump the brakes until we have rules in place to stop this technology from doing grave harm. And that includes instituting mandatory safeguards and a comprehensive testing regime."
"This should not be a partisan issue," he continued. "The impact of AI on our collective future, on our safety, on our security, on our economy, and on our shared humanity—but be the type of risk that brings us all together."
While blasting Trump's recent comments dismissing concerns about AI dangers as "a hoax" to be ignored, Van Hollen said what can't be ignored is how the industry and its financial backers have used their outsized wealth and power to create the current situation in which AI has avoided serious oversight.
"The Silicon Valley big-wig investors and tech oligarchs that have bankrolled Donald Trump back into the White House didn't do it because they all became MAGA overnight. They did it because there was an implicit deal. In return for their support and funding his vanity projects, like his obscene ballroom, they wanted something in return: a free hand on AI policy."
Progressive political journalist David Sirota said Van Hollen's message was spot on.
"Van Hollen absolutely nails it," said Sirota. "He explicitly says AI oligarchs should be held civilly and criminally liable under existing laws, and he points out that the AI crisis is a crisis of corruption. This is the message."
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'End the AI Arms Race,' Casar Says at Pro-Human Assembly Amid 'History-Defining Moment'
"We all still inhabit this small planet, we all still breathe the same air, and we all still cherish our children’s future."
Sep 15, 2026
US Congressman Greg Casar on Tuesday called on the United States to abandon its race to develop increasingly powerful artificial intelligence and instead lead a global effort to prevent technologies that could escape human control, declaring that the country—and humanity—faces a “history-defining moment” over the future of AI.
Speaking at the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington, DC, the Texas Democrat and Congressional Progressive Caucus chair urged lawmakers and the public to confront the potential dangers of advanced AI more candidly and reject the increasingly common argument that the United States must accelerate development or China will be the first to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI), an advanced AI that can understand, learn, and apply knowledge of any subject as well as or better than a typical human.
“No one can win the AI arms race,” Casar said. “It’s up to us to end the AI arms race.”
A few billionaires in Silicon Valley are racing to build technology they admit they can't control. I'm not willing to gamble your job, your freedom, or your life on it. We need to ban artificial superintelligence.
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— Congressman Greg Casar (@repcasar.bsky.social) September 14, 2026 at 3:06 PM
The one-day event, which was organized by the Future of Life Institute, featured congressional lawmakers, AI experts, journalists, labor leaders, religious figures, technology critics, and others concerned about the rapid, unchecked development of what could prove to be the most consequential invention in human history.
Scheduled speakers included Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.); Congressmen Don Beyer (D-Va.) and Bill Foster (D-Ill.); Steve Bannon, a former senior adviser to President Donald Trump; economist and Nobel laureate Daron Acemoğlu; AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler; and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten.
Sanders called for "a pause on advanced AI development until a new federal AI regulatory body is up and running and has established clear rules and a model review process to ensure safe and secure development of this technology."
"In addition, we need a complete ban on artificial superintelligence—an AI mind smarter than any human and capable of operating independently beyond our control," the two-time presidential candidate continued. "But none of this can just happen in the United States alone. There must be international cooperation. That is why I am doing all that I can to see that President Trump and President Xi [Jinping] of China negotiate an AI treaty when they soon meet."
"I know there are many who think that is impossible," Sanders added. "It’s not. Back in the 1980s, [then-President] Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union, two people with very different political and ideological positions, understood that a nuclear war would not be good for either country or the rest of the world—and they reached a nuclear arms agreement. Trump and Xi can do the same."
Casar also compared the current AI competition to the Cold War nuclear arms race during his speech on Tuesday.
“We must end the AI arms race—because we all still inhabit this small planet, we all still breathe the same air, and we all still cherish our children’s future," he implored.
“Leading in AI diplomacy does not mean waiting around for an international agreement on dangerous AI,” Casar said. “Putting up guardrails now is the best way to show we are serious about getting to a deal.”
The congressman argued that stronger US safeguards could also slow dangerous AI development abroad because Chinese models currently benefit from American technology. He added that export controls could further restrict the spread of potentially dangerous systems.
“Putting up guardrails now is the best way to show we are serious about getting to a deal.”
“If an aerospace company started manufacturing planes that do not listen to pilots, the government would not allow those planes into the air,” Casar stressed. “The answer is simple: We ban AI systems that are too powerful for humans to control.”
Earlier this month, Sanders and Casar introduced legislation to do just that. Sanders argued that their Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act is aimed at ensuring that “the future of humanity cannot be left in the hands of a handful of Big Tech oligarchs.”
Experts have also pointed to the growing number of incidents of AI autonomously hacking into outside systems as proof of the need for a new federal agency tasked with regulating and investigating tech companies as they rush headlong toward AGI.
Casar asserted Tuesday that the immediate task at hand is to overcome the reluctance of politicians and others to speak plainly about the stakes.
“We need to tell people the truth about the danger posed here—and organize the country,” he said. "I, too, have at points held back, for fear of sounding alarmist. Today I want to say clearly: The time for tempering our rhetoric has passed. We owe people the truth.”
The political challenge is substantial. Trump has rejected calls for a slowdown, calling AI risks—which many experts agree include a growing chance that machines could one day wipe out humanity—a "hoax," while arguing that the United States must win the AI competition with China.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has similarly invoked arms race language, contending that if “killer robots” are inevitable, he would rather they be American than Chinese.
Casar offered a starkly different vision, positing that "America is powerful enough to shape our own destiny. To choose our own path. One where we develop AI that serves us, rather than AI we serve.”
“We need a pro-human approach,” the congressman concluded. “End the AI arms race.”
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Here's Why Ro Khanna and AOC Should Run for President in 2028
While there is a difference in how these two politicians label themselves, most voters will be much more interested in whether each will address the needs of the working class and fight the greed of the billionaires.
Sep 15, 2026
Fifteen years ago, during President Obama's first term, we co-founded RootsAction as an online progressive group challenging not only Republicans but also the corporatism and militarism of the Democratic Party. RootsAction supported Bernie Sanders for president in 2016 and 2020. Two years before the 2024 election disaster that returned Donald Trump to the White House, RootsAction launched the Don’t Run Joe campaign, with the warning that the renomination of Joe Biden by Democrats “would be a tragic mistake.”
Despite polls showing as early as 2022 that strong majorities of Democrats wanted a 2024 nominee other than Biden, the “Don’t Run Joe” message went unheeded until Biden’s debate debacle in June 2024. By then, it was too late for the open primary process needed to produce a ticket that could inspire activists—and defeat the fascistic faux-populism of Trump.
Like the 2024 victory of the twice-impeached, repeatedly indicted Trump, his 2016 win was avoidable. Tad Devine makes the case in his new book, “How the Democrats Screwed Bernie.” Devine had been a top strategist for mainstream Democrats for decades before he joined Bernie’s first presidential campaign.
One lesson we’ve learned over the last 15 years is that it’s a big mistake for activists to sit back and expect the Democratic Party establishment to serve up candidates who can mobilize voters and win elections. That establishment failed us in winnable presidential elections in 2000, 2004, 2016 and 2024. Devine, who knows the mechanisms inside and out, says the dollar-dominated process is often rigged against outsider “candidates who connect with voters, who understand voter anxieties”—and these genuinely populist candidates “are more likely to succeed in general elections than those who rely primarily on insider muscle.”
This week, RootsAction teamed up with Progressive Democrats of America to announce that we will jointly launch, just after the November midterm elections, a campaign urging Reps. Ro Khanna and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. “The voices of Khanna and/or AOC are needed in the presidential campaign to ensure that voters hear serious solutions,” the campaign’s petition says. “Without a progressive populist advocate atop the ticket, the Democratic response would be woefully underwhelming—enabling right-wing demagoguery to push voter unrest in dangerous and divisive directions.”
The petition statement adds that the presence of Khanna and/or AOC in the presidential race “is crucial to foster debate on healthcare, jobs, AI, militarism and the U.S. relationship with Israel, along with many other issues important to a wide range of voters.”
Congressman Khanna—whose name recognition has grown recently because of his legislative battles to release the Epstein files and to end the Iran War, and his detention in the occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers—represents our country’s wealthiest district and much of Silicon Valley. He wants to increase taxes on the rich. He calls himself “a progressive capitalist.”
Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez entered the House with great fanfare after a 2018 Democratic primary victory over one of the party’s top leaders on Capitol Hill (Joe Crowley, now a corporate lobbyist) representing a working-class, Latino-majority district in New York City. She led the effort to bring the jobs-creating Green New Deal proposal to Congress. She calls herself “a democratic socialist.”
While there is a difference in how these two politicians label themselves, most voters will be much more interested in whether each will address the needs of the working class and fight the greed of the billionaires. Both are direct political descendants of Bernie Sanders—AOC was active in the 2016 Bernie campaign, which inspired her to run for Congress, and she regularly joined Bernie last year at Fighting Oligarchy rallies; Khanna was a surrogate and national co-chair in Bernie’s 2020 presidential campaign.
RootsAction’s coalition partner in this initiative, Progressive Democrats of America, has a history of major success in candidate recruitment. In late 2013, PDA launched the “Run, Bernie, Run” movement, which drafted Sen. Sanders to seek the Democratic nomination in 2016—a campaign that elevated the national conversation and helped spark today’s progressive upsurge.
The RunRoRunAOC.org petition argues that either Khanna or Ocasio-Cortez—or both of them—need to be in the presidential race. If both enter it, the organizations behind this recruitment initiative are not worried that the two will somehow “split the progressive vote.” As shown by the historic wave of insurgent victories in this year’s Democratic primaries, the party’s electoral base is largely and increasingly progressive. It’s not a small sliver of voters. And a progressive bloc of delegates at the party’s national convention in August 2028 would be all to the good, pushing for popular policies such as taxing the rich, resisting Big Tech’s AI data centers, abolishing ICE, green jobs initiatives, enhanced Medicare for All, cutting the military budget and stopping the weapons flow to Israel.
During last year’s New York City mayoral campaign—which, thankfully, employed ranked-choice voting—two progressive candidates actually ran as a duo in the Democratic primary: Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander. Mamdani became mayor thanks significantly to Lander, and now Lander is heading to Congress thanks in part to Mamdani’s endorsement and support. In other races, progressives have run in tandem in crowded fields, maintaining a non-aggression strategy while bolstering each other’s positions.
We should remember that in the early months of the 2019-2020 Democratic presidential race—before a fraught personal split between Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie—the presence of the two previously friendly candidates raising similar issues of inequality and corporate greed had actually moved the whole Democratic debate in a notably more progressive direction.
Despite millions of dollars flooding into the campaign coffers of corporatist Democratic candidates from special interests representing AI, crypto and Israel, and despite assists to those candidates from corporate media, the 2026 Democratic primaries have produced an unprecedented wave of victories by underfunded progressive candidates. These insurgent successes have occurred at local and statewide levels.
It will soon be time for progressives to focus on the national level.
Leaving the 2028 presidential nominating process to the money-drenched party elites—with their record of electoral defeats, governance failures and betrayals—would be a recipe for disaster.
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'Madness and Puerility': Critics Stunned as Trump Claims His 'High IQ' Enough to Regulate AI
Trump's stance on AI regulation is "a fundamental incompetence that places us all in grave danger," said one critic.
Sep 14, 2026
President Donald Trump on Monday slapped down the idea of putting guardrails on artificial intelligence, despite increased warnings from industry insiders and outside experts about the technology's potential dangers to humanity.
In a Truth Social post, Trump suggested that his own intellect was singlehandedly capable of regulating AI, a technology so complicated that even its own creators have acknowledged difficulties in understanding it.
"The only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT," Trump wrote, "and the USA has that, in spades!"
The president then claimed, without offering any details, that his administration had already "stopped AI 'people' from doing bad, or potentially bad, 'things,'" and then baselessly claimed the nationwide backlash to the technology was part of a vast conspiracy theory in service of the Chinese Communist Party.
"There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China," Trump wrote. "WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!"
Regardless of Trump's social media rants, there is widespread concern about the impacts of AI across the political spectrum.
Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, described Trump's stance on regulating AI as "a fundamental incompetence that places us all in grave danger," in a Common Dreams op-ed published Monday.
Reacting directly to Trump's Monday social media post, Sachs told Common Dreams that it was a sign that "we are in the grip of madness and puerility."
Axios reported on Monday that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will join former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and former Anthropic AI researcher Jacob Coxon on Tuesday for a what is being described as a "Pro-Human Assembly" aimed at highlighting the dangers posed by the continued development of the technology.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), chair of Senate Subcommittee on Disaster Management, announced last week that he is opening a probe into the recent autonomous hack carried out by OpenAI agents, while also examining threats posed by the AI industry as a whole.
Calls to regulate AI have grown over the last week since Coxon announced that he had resigned from his position at AI lab Anthropic because he no longer felt it was possible to safely develop the technology.
In a social media post announcing his resignation, Coxon claimed that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” and accused them of “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
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'Hit the Brakes': Anthropic CEO's Push to 'Pace' AI Development Called Latest Sign Congress Must Act
"When the future of humanity is at stake we need a PAUSE on advanced AI development and a ban on artificial superintelligence," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Sep 12, 2026
As Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei added his voice on Saturday to the growing call to slow down development of artificial intelligence, writing in a 3,800-word essay that companies must pace "the rate of capabilities advancement" in light of recent cyberattacks by AI models, progressive lawmakers and journalists were among those who said the warning made clear that action must be taken—but with Congress and regulatory agencies, not tech billionaires who have spent years pushing for an AI expansion, leading the way.
Amodei wrote that two things have convinced him that "we must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models": the fact that in recent months, "AI has been advancing drastically faster, driven primarily by AI’s growing ability to build the next generation of AI"—also known as recursive self-improvement—and the recent OpenAI-HuggingFace incident, in which hundreds of agents in OpenAI's security test systems broke out of confinement and hacked into the AI startup HuggingFace, conducting cyberattacks on targets they had not been asked to attack.
As The Wall Street Journal and Politico reported Friday, another cyberattack was carried out by OpenAI's agents months before the HuggingFace incident in July. The company's models that were being tested and had not been given full access to the internet nevertheless hacked into an online coding service called RubyGems earlier this year. The models created reports and filled out spreadsheets. Anthropic and Meta have also reported autonomous cyberattacks by their AI agents.
Amodei said the incidents led him to call for a three-step plan to pace AI development and allow companies time to "align and safeguard their models, and for third-party evaluators to confirm this."
He called for:
- Embedded evaluators, with each AI company committing to giving "ongoing, employee-like access to a team of embedded third-party evaluators" who would "verify adherence to safety practices and commitments, report incidents, and help assess the alignment of not just completed AI models but training pipelines and processes";
- Democratic coordination, with companies establishing "common safety standards as well as limits on the rate of unchecked AI progress"; and
- Global coordination, with democratic governments attempting to "coordinate with authoritarian governments, to the extent this is possible, while taking seriously the challenges of verifying compliance."
Amodei's essay was published days after Jacob Coxon, a researcher at Anthropic, publicly resigned out of fear that the company's AI technology “could kill us all by the end of the decade" as it builds "superhuman systems"—a concern he said is shared by many in the industry.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and tech billionaire Elon Musk expressed agreement with Amodei. Altman called "independent evaluators with employee-like access" a "great idea."
"We will do the same," said Altman. "We'll have more to share soon."
US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) was among those who appeared less than impressed by Amodei and Altman's sudden push for their industry to slow down their rapid pace of development.
In a video posted on social media, Khanna called on Amodei to disclose whether or not he agrees with Coxon about the possibility that AI could wipe out humanity, and to back more far-reaching regulations on AI.
"AI guys act as if they're a priesthood speaking Latin, keeping the rest of us in the dark," said Khanna. "But behind all the jargon, it's actually pretty straightforward... We need to stop, ban, self-improving AI. You cannot have recursive, self-improving AI that basically is able to improve itself and exceed human capability, that has us lose control."
He added that laws must be passed establishing "mandatory liability and criminal penalties. If you're creating an AI that is doing illegal things, you either should face liability or criminal sanctions."
The tech lords act like priests who know Latin & keep the rest of us in the dark.
Get beyond the opaque jargon and its pretty straightforward.
Amodei doesn’t go nearly far enough.
We must pause recursive self improving AI.
We must have criminal and civil liability for AI that… https://t.co/ewjSnjYuXK pic.twitter.com/f7ujo4HQNY
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) September 12, 2026
Journalist David Sirota of The Lever agreed, writing that "if the law explicitly made AI CEOs financially and criminally liable for any mass destruction their technologies create—and if AI industry shareholders knew their companies faced the threat of significant financial losses for such destruction—much of the 'AI is getting out of control!' threat would instantly end."
"Those CEOs would instantly make AI far safer and impose guardrails on their companies," he said.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has called for a nationwide moratorium on the construction of AI data centers and this week announced a bipartisan hearing on the "extraordinary dangers" of rapid AI development—including testimony from one leading AI scientist who has warned against self-regulation by tech firms—said the calls by Amodei, Altman, and Musk were "not enough."
"When you are racing towards a cliff, you don’t just ease up on the gas pedal," said Sanders. "You hit the brakes. When the future of humanity is at stake we need a PAUSE on advanced AI development and a ban on artificial superintelligence—an AI mind smarter than any human and capable of operating independently beyond our control."
Sanders called on President Donald Trump—who has aggressively pushed for more AI data center development and sought to stop states from passing their own AI regulations—to negotiate a treaty pausing AI and banning superintelligence with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two leaders are set to meet later this month to discuss AI.
Trump on Friday dismissed concerns about warnings coming from the AI industry, telling a Los Angeles Times reporter, "It's going to be fine," and adding that his top worry about the technology is falling behind China.
Reps. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) and Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker were also among the politicians who said Amodei's warning was the latest sign that Congress and the Trump administration must take action to rein in the industry.
Juliette Kayyem, the faculty chair of homeland security at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, said AI CEOs' warnings about their technology would be seen as more credible if they also announced a pause on their plans for initial public offerings (IPO), which Anthropic and OpenAI are both pursuing in the coming months.
Altman said Friday that OpenAI will not plan for an IPO, which could value the company at $1 trillion, in 2026.
Amodei, said Kayyem, should "put his money where his mouth is."
"He has known of this danger a while," she said. "It is now threatening his valuation in the IPO. Cancel the IPO. Then I’ll believe he’s serious."
Journalist Peter Rothpletz noted that the safety concerns within the AI industry must be "much more dire" than the public is aware, considering "Dario, Sam, and Musk are all issuing these statements in unison."
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68% of US Voters Back Sanders/Casar Bill for AI Pause, Ban on Superintelligence: Poll
The new survey results come as whistleblowers from leading AI firms speak out about the potential catastrophic dangers if their technology is allowed to develop unchecked.
Sep 10, 2026
As whistleblowers in the artificial intelligence industry speak out about the extraordinary risk posed by their technology if it remains unchecked, a new poll out Wednesday reveals that more than two-thirds of US voters agree with a new proposal in Congress to pause artificial intelligence development until guardrails are set up and ban AI superintelligence completely.
The proposed legislation, announced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) last week, and soon to be introduced in Congress, would ban developers from creating “superintelligent” AI programs capable of surpassing human cognition and resisting human attempts to shut them down. It would also halt "advanced" AI development until a new federal regulatory body was established to set clear rules and processes for AI safety.
The polling firm Data for Progress asked more than 1,300 likely voters about the bill. According to survey results released on Wednesday, 68% of them said they would support the proposal to temporarily pause advanced AI development and permanently prohibit the development of superintelligent programs, while just 25% said they'd oppose it.
Though the bill was proposed by a pair of progressive lawmakers, its appeal spans the political spectrum: 72% of Democrats and 70% of independent and third-party voters said they supported it. But so did 63% of Republican voters.
The poll results come just one day after AI researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic, saying that the company and one of its top competitors, OpenAI, where he previously worked, were more concerned with winning the AI race than with protecting the public against out-of-control “superhuman systems” that many of his industry colleagues privately fear could “kill us all by the end of the decade.”
"Neither company is acting responsibly," Coxon said. "They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
With reports piling up of AI agents escaping human control, hacking into external computer systems, and deceiving users, several other researchers at leading AI firms have cosigned Coxon's warning, saying that AI could have catastrophic results if it surpasses human capabilities.
Evan Hubinger, an alignment science lead at Anthropic, said that while "the risk from present models is low," he and other researchers "earnestly believe AI could kill all humans" if it continues to develop and put the likelihood of it happening within the next decade at above 10%.
Alex Turner, who left his job as a research scientist at Google's DeepMind in June, concurred that Coxon was "right" and that "many researchers believe they are building something that could kill everyone on the planet. It was literally my day job to think about how to stop that."
Even if AI doesn't lead to the extinction of humanity, other researchers have said they are gravely worried about its impacts on society.
"I think there are a number of ways AI could go poorly for humanity, and at the current, frankly terrifying pace, humanity will be quite lucky if we manage to find and stay on the narrow path between all the bad outcomes," wrote Jason Wolfe, a researcher at OpenAI. "Regardless of what you think of OpenAI, this is not a problem that can be solved by any one company (or country) in isolation."
Jonathan Richard Schwarz, former Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, noted that he left the company after seven years and rejected offers from other AI companies "due to severe concerns about the concentration of power these labs represent."
"What is currently happening in this field is deeply unhealthy for society," Schwarz said.
In a Wednesday social media post, Sanders pointed to these and other warnings from industry experts as evidence that federal intervention is urgently needed.
"The very people building this technology admit that it could threaten the future of humanity," the senator wrote.
He added on Thursday that "Unless we reverse course, there is a very real possibility that once advanced AI surpasses human intelligence, it could escape our control with catastrophic consequences."
Wednesday's poll results are consistent with other recent surveys showing that solid majorities of voters across all parties object to the construction of AI data centers near them, an issue that has come to dominate the 2026 election season.
William Lawrence, a cofounder of the Sunrise Movement, became the Democratic nominee for the US House in Michigan's 7th Congressional District last month, in part by tapping into constituents' fears about data centers. He said recent whistleblower warnings were evidence that AI companies were "gambling with our lives" and needed to be reined in.
"I can't see the future," Lawrence said in a video posted online Thursday. "But if there is even a 5% chance of a bioweapon being set loose, authoritarians using AI to entrench their own power, or a rogue AI hacker taking down the economy, that risk is too great."
"We need a pause on the development of AI models and data center construction," he said. "I do believe that AI is very powerful and could potentially be of tremendous benefit to humanity. But if we stay trapped in this arms race, if OpenAI and Anthropic have to keep competing for market share, we know that they will not slow down."
"The only entity that has the power to intervene here," Lawrence said, "is the federal government."
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