Scott Wiener wins Pelosi's seat, pushes federal AI regulation

California state senator Scott Wiener, author of the first proposed US frontier AI law, won Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco House seat and is pushing for federal AI regulation with a powerful regulator, whistleblower protections, kill switches and audits, while opposing laws that preempt states. A METR report suggesting Anthropic achieved recursive self-improvement heightened his sense of urgency.

• AI safety advocates gain ground after $110M midterm push2026-11-08
• METR audit finds Anthropic may have crossed its AI acceleration warning threshold2026-11-06
• METR study finds AI is speeding its own development2026-11-06
• Group says Anthropic accelerating AI development despite slowdown calls2026-11-05
• Anthropic gives METR employee-level access2026-10-15